9 May 2007
Telecommunications company Virgin Media has been forced to admit that it is placing traffic shaping measures on its most prolific downloaders which will limit the speed at which they receive data.
Thought to affect just 5% of its customers - around 150,000 subscribers - the traffic shaping measures will moderates downstream speeds for subscribers "downloading an unusually large amount" of data, sometimes as much as 3GB, during the peak period of 16:00-to-midnight.
The limitations will affect subscribers differently, depending on which package they have signed up to. Customers on the M package for example, will have their download speed cut from 2Mbps to 1Mbps for four hours if they download 350 MB during the peak time.
Those in the middle sector of L subscribers will be limited from 4Mbps 2Mbps for exceeding 750MB and XL customers will be dropped from as much as 20Mbps to 5Mbps for downloading more than 3GB.
Virgin Media is not the only broadband provider to implement limitations on "abnormal" bandwidth use, but BT claims that as soon as its 21st Century Network (2CN), which it began to implement late last year, is fully functional, limitations will no longer be needed.
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