Posted: 09th Aug, 2005 By: MarkJ
ADSLGuide reports that PlusNet has begun issuing warning letters to customers deemed to be abusing the service through heavy data consumption. The message appears targeted at those using "
in excess of 100GB per month"!:
It has been previously stated that customers regularly using in excess of 100GB per month are using the service in an unsustainable manner.
It has to come to our attention that your connection has consistently been used in excess of 150GB per month, mainly during peak times. We consider this to be unsustainable, and the combined impact of unreasonable usage affects all our other customers. You can view your usage at http://portal.plus.net/view_my_broadband_usage/ . You can also see peak times at http://portal.plus.net/support/adsl/adsl_utilisation.shtml .
In order to protect the broadband platform and maintain the experience for all our customers, we are taking steps to reduce the impact of unsustainable usage customers.
During the next 14 days you must revise your usage patterns and use less than 50GB of data transfer, to equate to an average of less than 100GB per month. This is measured as a combined total of upstream and downstream traffic. We will monitor your usage throughout this period to see if there is any alteration in the way you use the service.
If you continue to use your service unsustainably we will apply a managed usage profile to your connection and will strictly apply a 30:1 PlusNet contention ratio. For a 2Mb customer this could result in a throughput of around 67Kbps. This will result in your current unsustainable usage not adversely affecting our other customers and the broadband network.
If you choose to change your usage patterns and use the service more reasonably, there will be no change to your service. However, we will continue to monitor your usage and we will immediately apply the managed usage profile to your connection if your usage returns to unsustainable levels.
Should you wish to cancel your service or request your MAC Key as a result of receiving this email, we will waive any outstanding contract rental charges. However, if you have any deferred hardware, migration or activation payments, these must be paid in full.Much of these problems come back to the way that ISP's have marketed their services, yet some common sense should always be used. The levels of consumption being highlighted above are clearly extreme for a residential product.
Consumers should always keep in mind that ADSL services are 'shared', hence excessive use of your package stands a strong chance of negatively impacting others.
The exceptions tend to be when providers unfairly warn about excessive levels of usage that are not truly excessive, but this is not one of those cases.