Why have we doubled our download usage allowances?

Whether you are a home broadband or business broadband customer, we recognise that you are using your broadband for so much more now.

For this reason, and because we are truly serious about our mission "to provide the best ISP service in the UK", it's time for a dramatic increase to our usage allowances. Recent investments in our network, including elements of BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) project, support these broadband usage increases.

In the past many of you probably only had one computer at home which you simply used for surfing the net. Today you are using your broadband service to connect to multiple PCs. You watch iPlayer, upload photos, chat with friends and family, download films, (even in HD), play games and social network - not to mention the use of other gadgets such as mobile phones!

Business broadband users also expect so much more from their broadband service as the Internet has become firmly established as an essential tool. Increasingly more and more information transfer, communications and business transactions take place across the Internet and as a result download volumes are increasing at almost 20% year on year.

This upward trend for all our customers is only set to continue, especially now that the download speeds for our broadband services have increased to "up to 20Mbps". Later this year we will also be launching Fibre broadband services that will provide a minimum 15Mbps download speed and the potential for "up to 40Mbps" [ FTTC ].