Sorry folks but my tiny brain is getting a bit confused by this thread. It seems to me that the limit being discussed in the thread is now a rather woolly limit averaged over a month at 30GB implying that a "Persistent Offender" would be someone who exceeded this very high limit over a period of several months.
My understanding of the new NTL Acceptable Use Policy (http://www.ntlworld.com/legals/user-policy.htm) is however, that far from being a woolly 30GB per month limit, it is a rigidly defined 1GB *PER DAY* limit (i.e. I am being monitored and measured on a daily basis). The MD of NTL:Home clarifies this in his letter published on nthellworld (http://www.nthellworld.com/article/?action=show&id=335) in which he says "We will only contact customers who exceed their daily (note again the word "daily") data limit for three or more days in any consecutive 14 day period".
Looking at this in practical terms it seems to me to be saying that if I want to download a new multi-CD Linux distro release (such as Mandrake) I *WILL* be classified as a "Persistent Offender" and be cut off if I download more than one CDs ISO per day (two ISOs per day would exceed my daily limit) now turning a distro upgrade into a very drawn out, week long, download job. Thankfully I only subscribe to their slowest service so one ISO per day is all I can manage anyway, however this must surely really hit hard those of you on the list who are shelling out loads of dosh for a higher speed service and are used to downloading a complete multi-ISO distro in a day.
Sorry if I have misunderstood things, I just wanted to clarify the definition of a "Persistent Offender".
Ian