ISP's and their Acceptable Use Policies

I have been using BT for my internet for about 5 years now and in all honesty while I've been using them it's been ok. Odd points of slowness but no major problems that have caused me severe irritation.

For about a week now I've been having problems with doing just about anything over the internet, it takes me a good minute to load up a page that has a high level of graphical representation. Playing MxO is basically impossible and any file I attempt to download has resulted in failure due to my internet being extremely slow. I've waited about a week checking over settings on the router ect. finally thinking I'm going to get in contact with BT. Get on the phone and apparently due to me downloading a few larger files from work and Playing MxO and downloading different webpages general internet use It's caused a breach of their "Acceptable use Policy" being the fact that I've been using the internet and downloaded a bit more than usual this month has caused "detrimental performance of the service to other customers" Apparently because I've downloaded approximately 60Gb of downloads this month this means that I have to have my internet speed cut down to 100kb from "upto 8Mb" (something else I have a problem with but won't go into that) for a month worst was that I wasn't even informed of it.

Now basically that means that although my broadband allows "unlimited usage allowance" It's not unlimited because obviously they have somewhere a large clause which says that a customer not download more than XGb of data in a month which is contained in their Acceptable Use Policies which completely contradicts the term "Unlimited"

Needless to say I'm slightly... aggravated about this since not only does it limit my use of the internet for personal use it also stops me from doing my job at home as well. This also means that many people who play games like MxO and other MMO's are probably more vulnerable to this than normal users, Generally I believe that it was caused by the fact that I had to download several large files at once that we're in area of 3GB but as far as I'm concerned when I bought the package it said that I had unlimited broadband which can be interpreted as "You can download as much as you bluddy want to!" but in actuality they mean "You can download as much as you want to as long as you don't download this much"

In the case of having a "detrimental affect" on the network. The speed I set the downloads to go for were 10Kb so that the internet was unaffected at home and so I could still play MxO, meaning I had no "detrimental affect" on any other user.

Question is I pose to you, do you think it's fair that they have these hidden limits?

Nope, they should give you a limit if there is one and not say its ...

Unlimited****

****Subject to fair use policy...

Yea theres always a catch...total BS

If when you accepted there was no such rule you can sew em. Companies lying to customers is a very BIG offense so check it up and contact them if this wasn't what you accepted to. I know a friend of mine who got told they had to replace his IPOD because it couldn't be fixed. He just opened it (I actually saw it) pushed a piece of the jack of earphones which was stuck and went back to the store. The employee lying got fired the day after.

This is a common issue right now, from what I hear--ISPs putting a tight cap on Internet users who go overboard on their montly bandwidth usage. Don't know how much you'll be able to do about it (they probably redefine "unlimited usage" somewhere in their legalese), but you're certainly not the only one facing this kind of problem.

Still, though... 60 GB in one month?! That's bigger than my hard drive.

Stack wrote:

This is a common issue right now, from what I hear--ISPs putting a tight cap on Internet users who go overboard on their montly bandwidth usage. Don't know how much you'll be able to do about it (they probably redefine "unlimited usage" somewhere in their legalese), but you're certainly not the only one facing this kind of problem.

Still, though... 60 GB in one month?! That's bigger than my hard drive.

I think I may have put it wrong. 60GB is how much I download overall including the size of web pages, information sent from your computer over the net to other servers for online games updates for virus checkers ect. I downloaded about 14Gb extra due to work this month but generally thats all that I "download" in the sense of huge files.

Depending on where you live, yeah - that's definitely a breach in your contract with them. If that was not stated in their contract when you signed with them, and they said 'unlimited', then it's unlimited.
Back to my original point, if you live in the States, report them to the Better Business Bureau. That's a load of BS.

I used to work for a satellite internet company (not gonna say which one, but they sucked) and that particular company called it a "Fair Access Policy" (lol FAP), their limits were a LOT LOWER because of how satellite works, but all ISPs have that cap in case someone in the area is stealing everyone else's bandwidth. It's pretty high for cable Internet, i think the OP said like 60Gigs, but it's still there. Normally your speeds go back up after a month-ish.

sontag wrote:

I used to work for a satellite internet company (not gonna say which one, but they sucked) and that particular company called it a "Fair Access Policy" (lol FAP), their limits were a LOT LOWER because of how satellite works, but all ISPs have that cap in case someone in the area is stealing everyone else's bandwidth. It's pretty high for cable Internet, i think the OP said like 60Gigs, but it's still there. Normally your speeds go back up after a month-ish.

Thing was I wasn't stealing bandwith, I was doing generally constant downloads at about 10-20Kbps which is not even 1/2 the speed of dial up. The length of the connection doesn't cause a "detrimental" affect the speed doesn't cause a "detrimental" affect the only thing they're basing this on is the amount of data that has been downloaded during the last month.

Aye, a lot of people are getting hit by this recently, myself included.

Basically, if an ISP deems your internet usage to be too high, regardless of any 'unlimited' download limits, they'll stick you on whats known as a heavy users list.

What that then means is that during peak times your download speeds are gonna get butt raped and theres bugger all you can do about it. Its all in the fine print and they all do it now.

I'm with BT and my bandwidth is severely restricted with certain things such as Torrent programs during the peak times. As soon as it hits 11pm or 12pm it's like somebody flicks a switch and the download speeds just shoot up. I'm actually on the Unlimited package also and my upload speed has always been terrible. Hence why I had to stop dj'ing etc. for RMC.

That's tough....

At University, I get a 10 GB/week bandwidth limit. I can download at 10Mb/s, though, so it's all good

ALL "unlimited" plans have a fair-use policy that either allows them to throttle your bandwidth or charge extra if they deem it necesary.

Typically they work like this:

medium use home user plan: 256kb - 1mb dowstream / 128kb - 512mb upstream / usage capped at x GB
"unlimited" plan: medium home user speeds / usage capped at around 70 of heavy user limit - depending on TOTAL monthly usage by provider trunk (eg: if everyone else in your area downloads not much that month and you download the same as usual you will be closer to getting capped because it appears you have been slowing down other user by comparison)
Heavy user plan: 1mb - 26mb downstream / 512kb - 2mb upstream / usage capped anywhere between 20GB and 100GB (some services have say a 7GB peak usage - noon to midnight, and 14GB offpeak - midnight to noon)


Along with this many providers are shaping traffic via QOS (Quality Of Service) services which prioritise certain types of traffic depending on how critical their timing is.
eg: VOIP traffic often gets priority to prevent long delays in a conversation, while bittorrent traffic gets de-prioritised. when all the regular users go to bed then all the low priority traffic comes through unhindered by high priority traffic. You can avoid some traffic shaping by encrypting your bittorrent traffic (most clients have an "encrypt" option).

In Australia most connections are about $40 per month with a down/up of 256kb-512b/128kb and a 6GBto 10GB cap. I'm on Optus Cable  (because I can't get ADSL 2+ in my area) so I get 9mb down/1mb up with 7GB peak and 14GB off-peak cap. I get throttled down to 64kb if I exceed either cap and if I exceed the peak gap I lose the off peak data too.
On my old ADSL2+ provider I used to get 20GB peak, 40GB off peak and 16mb down /2mb up for $50 including a free VOIP line that gave me $0.10 flat-rate calls anywhere in Australia. I miss iiNet

I understand from their point of view what is happening.

When broadband first came out not many people could afford it so it wasn't being used much. As time has progressed more and more people have got broadband (aka the average joe) and now the people who got broadband first are in this "High usage group" (I'm in one to >_<). What I don't get is what the *CENSORED* are the internet providers going to do in a couple of years when the average joe becomes the "High usage group" through stuff like HD movie rentals off Apple TV?

They need to buck up their act, move with the times and provide more otherwise everyone is going to be a "high bandwidth user".

I was with BT to when they first brought 512k broadband out stayed with them up till they brought 8MB out but switched to Tiscali. Wish I hadn't now cause if I had stayed with BT the original contract had no "fair usage policy" and I could complain, everyone has one now. >_<

But yea you have every right to sue their *CENSORED* if you've been with them for 5 years, there were no stinky "fair usage policy's" back then.