"Fasthosts has always advocated unlimited Web site traffic," says Mark Jeffries, CTO of Fasthosts (fasthosts.co.uk). "And whilst this approach has always been rather unique, it was until now not widely publicised. With our new hosting plans, we are promoting the importance of unlimited traffic as an essential and integral feature for a hosting package."

Transfer limits are rarely a concern for the vast segment of shared hosting customers that never approaches the limits of its hosting accounts' monthly data allowance, but for the developer and small business customers, who often depend on heavy traffic to their sites, transfer limits can create serious problems when reached.

"Almost all larger Web hosts worldwide have allowances," says Jeffries. "And if these are exceeded, [the host] can either charge you bandwidth charges or turn your site off, or at least throttle it. Whilst other large providers can offer a high quality service, most are prevented from providing unlimited traffic."

In last week's announcement, Fasthosts identified itself as the only hosting provider in the UK supporting shared hosting accounts with unlimited data transfer. While there are a few other Web hosts with unlimited data transfer plans elsewhere in the world, Jeffries says the company is the only provider in the UK with the scale and technical resources to provide that kind of support.

The feature is both a valuable benefit for users, says Jeffries, and a considerable selling point for the company's services. Particularly among businesses that have lost money as a result of unavailability in the past are specifically attracted to the assurance that their Web sites can cope with surges in traffic.

Obviously, the company does not have an unlimited capacity to transfer data. But Fasthosts operates a very large network, with a carefully calculated and monitored margin that enables the company to handle any spikes in traffic that may occur.

"Of course," says Jeffries, "we have a finite amount of bandwidth available to us. But across the hosting platform we operate a policy of 100 percent headroom on all key capacity metrics, that is to say any key component of our platform is at peak times no more than 50 percent loaded. In relation to bandwidth we are actually in an even better position and currently at peak times we are only using approximately 40 percent of the total bandwidth available to us. With that kind of spare capacity we can easily cope with surges in bandwidth use from our customer's sites and servers."

The fact that Fasthosts' unlimited transfer offering is a selling point helps to illustrate the reality that transfer allowances, however high are no longer much of a selling point. The time when selling capacity as a commodity along with shared hosting was possible is close to an end, and now in the UK too, competing with larger hosts with resources on the scale of Fasthosts is becoming an increasingly difficult proposition for smaller shared hosts.