 |  | By Neil Hawkins Staff Writer Monday, 10 March 2008 |
HOW many times have you been told ‘life’s not fair’? Well here at ChooseISP.co.uk we’re egalitarian folk and we like to see everyone get a fair deal, especially when it concerns your broadband connection.
Fair usage policies are commonplace nowadays, faster connection speeds have resulted in massive amounts of data being downloaded every hour of the day and night.
This vast amount of traffic is managed by broadband providers in a variety of ways.
Some are upfront about their traffic management whilst others prefer to be more cloak and dagger.
We’ve dug around the most popular providers to see whether your broadband provider is ‘FAIR, or UNFAIR.’
Virgin Media Cable Broadband – (peak times) 4pm – 9pm
Virgin Media came in for some flak from its customers after introducing a fair use policy last July.
The policy was adjusted in the New Year to take uploading as well as downloading into account and now affects the top 3% of heavy broadband users on its service.
The basics are as follows:
- Size M customers are allowed 300Mb download or 150Mb upload
- Size L customers are allowed 800Mb download or 325Mb upload
- Size XL customers are allowed 3 GB download or 1250Mb upload
Once these limits are reached, connection speeds are cut to 1Mb for M and L customers and 5Mb for XL customers. These reductions last for five hours even if you exceed the limit 10 minutes before peak time ends.
This policy has got come in for some stick from Virgin Media customers because the new restrictions on uploads affects users who watch a lot of on-demand TV or play games.
That said most users should be totally unaffected by this policy but overstepping the mark just once during peak times, could see your connection speed cut.
This is a little unfair on users who download the odd rental film every now and then and should really only focus on those users who consistently download lots of data.
Even though Virgin Media’s peak hours only last till 9pm the large cuts in connection speeds means our verdict is UNFAIR.
Tiscali Broadband - 6pm-11pm
Tiscali has a slightly different way of preventing heavy users from affecting ‘normal’ customers, it lumps them all together at peak times away from other users and lets them fight amongst themselves for bandwidth.
Tiscali’s policy can be nicely summed up thus, use peer-to-peer or file sharing software a lot at peak times and you’ll be affected, don’t use it excessively or not at all and you’ll be fine.
In common with most other providers, outside peak hours there are no restrictions at all.
One thing we really like about Tiscali’s policy is that they give you two chances before restricting your connection and combined with real ‘no limits’ downloading outside peak hours we say FAIR.
Orange Broadband - 6pm-11pm
Like most other providers, Orange Broadband says that as long as you don’t use file sharing software or download large files then you’ll be fine. If you do use these programs then do so outside of peak hours.
Even if you follow these guidelines though you may find yourself on the end of a warning letter.
There are reports that Orange Broadband warns users who consistently download large amounts – 40+ Gb per month – whether they download outside peak hours or not.
This isn’t really made clear in the fair use policy on the Orange website and could be more explicit.
Due to the fact that Orange Broadband limits bandwidth on its unlimited packages to relatively small amounts we declare that Orange Broadband’s policy is UNFAIR.
BT Total Broadband – 6pm-11pm
BT Total Broadband’s fair use policy is quite vague but essentially the company limits heavy users and peer-to-peer software during peak hours.
BT does not specify when peak hours are but we can make an educated guess judging on reports from customers.
Neither does it say whether affected users will be warned but from looking other customers it seems that they do dish out the occasional wrist-slapping.
All in all it isn’t too draconian though and we therefore rate it FAIR.
TalkTalk Broadband – 6pm-10pm
TalkTalk Broadband’s fair usage policy is similar to BT’s in that it consists of a very vague paragraph hidden away on their website.
What we managed to garner from it is that peer-to-peer and other file sharing software is managed during peak hours but appears to be unrestricted at other times.
There is no word about warnings for heavy users either but again there are cases of letters being sent to particular users downloading particularly large amounts.
Here at ChooseISP we thing TalkTalk could explain itself a bit better but just manages to remain FAIR.
O2 Broadband and Be* Broadband – No specified times
What can we say; O2 Broadband and Be* Broadband run on the same network and have the same policy. But boy what a policy!
Essentially they are very relaxed about it, particularly Be* who have a reputation for amongst their customers as the best broadband provider for heavy downloaders.
Well and truly, FAIR.
To sum up...
All the broadband providers with over a million customers have to have some kind of policy in place otherwise the quality of service could be affected at busy periods.
The trouble comes when they are not up front about their policies leaving you, the consumer with a raw deal.
If you want a fast connection which is truly unlimited then go with one of the smaller companies such as O2 Broadband, otherwise steer clear of file-sharing software at peak times or you could find yourself slowing down!
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