Virgin Media Stiffens Download Rules For Heavy Users

Virgin Media is reportedly sending letters to the some of its customers who rank amongst its heaviest downloaders to educate them about forthcoming changes to Virgin Media's new traffic management policy.

The media company is one of the few mainstream broadband providers that does not carry a fair usage policy and openly markets its packages as carrying "no download" llimits.

However, Virgin Media has also implemented traffic shaping solutions to reduce the impact of heavy downloaders on the rest of its customers.

Traffic shaping will reduce the speed of heavy users during peak periods between 10am and 3pm and a set download limit has been introduced beyond which traffic shaping automatically kicks in.

Even then, Virgin Media's entry level customers can download up to 27GB worth of data per month with its XL users being offered a whopping 180GB download allowance; basically amounting to a download-as-much-as-you-want bonanza.

Only Bethere and Sky Broadband, amongst the mainstream 10mbps+ suppliers, offer "unlimited" broadband packages.

In related news, a Plusnet survey carried out by Yougov found out that four out of five broadband users have no ideas how much of their broadband allowance they use every month.
Tags: Broadband, net-neutrality, virginmedia