Fair Usage Policy

High speed Internet is a shared service and the activities of some users can impact the services available to other users. In an ideal environment, all users would obtain an equal percentage of the available bandwidth. Unfortunately, some users take a disproportionately greater share of the available bandwidth and, as a consequence, other users suffer a diminished experience. Particularly at Internet peak usage times, data rates may be reduced by contention within the C&W local access network and the public Internet.

 

In order to preserve the quality of our high speed Internet delivery services, we have introduced a Fair Usage Policy (“FUP”), effective 5 October 2007. A FUP is intended to ensure that the very few users of excessive bandwidth-consuming applications do not use their service to the detriment of other high speed Internet customers.

 

In order to implement our FUP, we monitor the performance of our network. In doing so, we may restrict the amount of bandwidth available to users of applications that consume large amounts of bandwidth or download unusually large files during peak times so to ensure a fair allocation of bandwidth to all high speed Internet customers.  If a high speed Internet customer exceeds the usage associated with the relevant high speed Internet package that such user is on, C&W will not be liable to such user for the quality, integrity or continuation of the high speed Internet services. 

 

Whilst this FUP is mainly aimed to avoid any unfair disruption of services resulting from extreme peer-to-peer usage, other file-sharing software and download of very large files during Internet peak usage times, we do not prevent the use of such applications or downloads.  Furthermore, if you do not use peer-to-peer or file-sharing software or if you don't download very large files continuously at such peak times, then it is unlikely you will be affected by this policy.

 

Additionally, as C&W upgrades its high speed Internet distribution capabilities users will be able to experience different contents enabled by the higher access speeds.  We may introduce explicit download limits to some high speed Internet packages in order to enable us to manage the high speed Internet customer experience. Obviously, we will communicate such limits as well as any available upgrade option or charges for excess usage and provide you with the relevant tools to measure your usage.  In order to understand the amounts of data that you will typically transfer, you may find the following guidance useful: