By: MarkJ - 15 May, 2009 (7:54 AM) - Score: 919 - Fixed Line Broadband

Customers of UK ISP and TV operator Virgin Media will be pleased to learn that their cable broadband usage allowances (does not apply to Virgin.net ADSL subscribers) have been raised. The changes aren't all huge but they will be noticeable and differ slightly from the updated Traffic Management policy trial that VM started to trial during February (original news).

Virgin Media's Traffic Management policy (here) works by allocating a maximum you can download during different times of the day. Customers that exceed this "threshold" (quota) for any given period will find their speed automatically reduced to a slower rate. The operator claims that the policy is "fair for everybody" and only usually affects the top 5% of customers (heavy users).

Naturally broadband XL (20Mbps) customers have seen the biggest increase, with allowances increasing from 6 to 7GB during 10am to 3pm, 3 to 3.5GB during 4pm to 9pm and staying at 1.4GB for the 3pm to 8pm period. Happily Virgin Media hasn't yet carried out plans to impose restrictions on its newer up to 50Mbps customers, which remain unrestricted.


So to recap, if you're an L (10Mbps) customer and downloaded more than 1.5GB during the 4pm and 9pm period then your download speed would be temporarily set to 2.5Mbps and upload speed to 128Kbps (0.12Mbps) for 5 hours; XL customers would see a reduction to 5Mbps. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting the update.