Virgin has announced a range of capping measures for heavy internet downloaders during peak hours. Virgin Media views peak hours as between 4pm and midnight, and they claim that this speed cap will only affect 5% of users from each tier of their service.

This differs from many ISPs who use FUP (Fair Usage Policy) to cap the amount actually downloaded. This has caused an uproar with many users who are signed up to unlimited broadband but in some cases have less download capabilities compared to a capped ISP such as Madasafish. Virgin Media have tried a different route; instead of capping the amount of downloads, after a certain level the speed of the connection will be reduced as follows:

• Virgin Media M: advertised as 2Mb/s, however users who download more than 350MB during peak hours will have their downstream reduced to 1Mb/s, and the upstream reduced to 128Kb/s for four hours.
• Virgin Media L: advertised as 4Mb/s, however users who download more than 750MB during peak hours will get their downstream reduced to 2Mb/s, and the upstream reduced to 192Kb/s for four hours.
• And the top service Virgin Media XL: advertised as 10Mb/s, but users downloading over 3GB in peak time will be reduced to 5Mb/s downstream and 256Kb/s upstream for four hours.