DataComms Europe's Fair Usage Policy is designed to make sure your broadband service is quick and reliable whenever you use it.
A very small number of customers use Peer to Peer or file sharing software, which constantly sends and receives video and other very large files, throughout the day. This type of activity uses a lot of bandwidth and can significantly reduce the speed at which other customers can access the Internet during peak hours. Approximately 1% of customers use more than 30% of the available bandwidth during peak hours. We don't believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers.

This fair usage policy automatically identifies the very small number of extremely heavy users and manages their bandwidth only during peak hours, to protect the service for all our other customers. Outside peak hours, the use of the Internet by these heavy users is unaffected.

We think this is the fairest approach. It protects the quality of service for the vast majority of our customers when they most use the service, while at the same time allowing the extremely heavy users to continue to send and receive without restriction outside of peak hours.

How do I know if I am likely to be affected by the Fair Usage Policy?

If you don't use Peer to Peer or file sharing software it is unlikely you will ever be affected by this Fair Usage Policy. If you do use Peer to Peer or file sharing software, all we ask is that you use this software considerately and send and receive large files outside of peak hours.
If you are affected, we will contact you by email to let you know that your usage at peak hours is excessive and is affecting other customers. The email will be sent to both your DataComms Europe email address and your contact email address (if different) and will contain simple advice on how to reduce your usage.

If your usage is still excessive, we will contact you again by email to ask you to reduce your sending and receiving of large files during peak hours. If your usage still remains excessive during peak hours, we will contact you a third time to advise you that we will be restricting your bandwidth during peak hours for the good of all other customers. This restriction will only apply during peak hours and there will be no restriction at other times of the day.

What happens if the Fair Usage Policy affects you?

During peak hours, customers affected by the fair usage policy will share bandwidth with each other and will be separated from other customers. The amount of bandwidth available for affected customers to share will be at least as much as for those customers unaffected by the policy.
The speed affected customers experience when downloading at peak hours will therefore depend on what these customers are doing. If they are all web-browsing and reading emails, they will experience normal broadband speed. If on the other hand they are using Peer to Peer or file sharing software they will experience slow broadband speed. Outside of peak hours, no restrictions will apply.

How can I manage my usage?

Simply ensure that any file sharing, sending and receiving of large file is done outside of peak hours.