FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
Story image
HD launches choose your own contention ratio & Fibre plans
Tue, 5th Mar 2013
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Auckland based business ISP and Data Center company HD, has introduced a revolutionary new service for its UFB customers. The new service has been called Line Velocity and enables customers to choose their own contention ratio.

Like airlines, your ISP oversells its International bandwidth. This is because in theory only a small number of customers are using their internet connections at exactly the same time. This overselling can sometimes see a number of customers during peak times having slow connectivity and is called a high contention ratio in ISP speak.

What HD is offering with its new service is the ability to choose your very own contention, which in theory enables you to choose exactly how much bandwidth capacity is set aside for you at any one time. In a business setting, if you're an organization only using email, then you could save money with a high contention ratio, as it doesn't matter if your emails take a few seconds extra to send. But if you're an organization watching a lot of streaming video, then you may wish to pay extra for a low contention ratio, so that even during peak times your connection is still fast.

Initially the plan is only available to customers on the UFB network, but work is underway to extend this offering to its xDSL plans too.

For more information about specific plans, click here.