Fair Use Policy

See also:

• Acceptable Usage Policy
• Privacy Policy

Our Fair Usage Policy (FUP) is designed to make sure our Internet service is quick and reliable whenever you use it.

A very small number of customers use Peer to Peer (P2P) or file sharing software, which constantly sends and receives video and other very large files, throughout the day. This type of activity uses a lot of bandwidth and can significantly reduce the speed at which other customers can access the internet during peak hours. In most cases, approximately 1% of customers use more than 30% of the available bandwidth during peak hours. We don't believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers.

Our FUP automatically identifies the very small number of extremely heavy users and manages their bandwidth at peak periods of activity on our Internet service, throughout the day, to protect the service for all our other customers. Outside peak periods, the use of the Internet by these heavy users is unaffected.

We think this is the fairest approach. It protects the quality of service for the vast majority of our customers when they most use of our Internet service, while at the same time allowing the extremely heavy users to continue to send and receive without restriction outside of peak hours.

How do I know if I am likely to be affected by the Fair Usage Policy?

If you don't use P2P or file sharing software it is unlikely you will ever be affected by this FUP. If you do use P2P or file sharing software, all we ask is that you use this software considerately and send and receive large files outside of peak hours.

How can I manage my usage?

Simply ensure that any file sharing, sending and receiving of large files is done outside of peak hours.

What happens if you are affected by our FUP.

During peak hours, customers affected by our FUP will have the amount of bandwidth available for peer-to-peer and other bandwidth intensive applications reduced. The amount of bandwidth available for affected customers to share will be at least as much as for those customers unaffected by the policy. The speed affected customers experience when downloading at peak hours will therefore depend on what these customers are doing. If they are all web-browsing and reading emails, they will experience normal broadband speed. If on the other hand they are using P2P or file sharing software they will experience slow broadband speed. Outside of peak periods, no restrictions will apply.