Posted: 18th Apr, 2008 By: MarkJ
Virgin Media customers living in Preston, Wigan, Blackpool, Camden, Dalston, Enfield and Haringey will shortly become test subjects for an adjustment to the operators broadband (cable) traffic management policy.
Under the
Existing Policy customers would only be affected if they downloaded an "
unusually large amount" during peak times (4pm till 9pm). However, an official statement posted to
Thinkbroadband's forum (
here) suggests that the new policy would add two additional time periods:
These optimisation policies are being trialed during the following times where the potential for abnormal traffic has been identified as having the greatest adverse impact on our customers' experience.
10am - 3pm Download only
4pm - 9pm Download
3pm - 8pm Upload
During these times the following thresholds will be applied for upstream and downstream.
10am - 3pm Download
Size M: 900Mb
Size L: 2400Mb
Size XL: 6000Mb
4pm - 9pm Download
Size M: 450Mb
Size L:1200Mb
Size XL: 3000Mb
3pm - 8pm Upload
Size M: 200Mb
Size L: 700Mb
Size XL: 1400Mb
The time periods are not cumulative, meaning that if you download too much in one period then it wouldnt be carried over into the next. Those found to be downloading too much on the M and L packages will find their speeds dropped to 1Mbps downstream and 128Kbps upstream, while XL customers would be reduced to 5Mbps downstream and 192Kbps upstream.