Traffic management policy
It’s important to us that you, our customers, get the best possible performance from your broadband services with us. Managing the traffic across our network of internet connections is how we make sure we are delivering the best service to all of our customers. This means providing fair access to great download speeds for each and every one of you. When downloading a particularly large amount of information over a long period of time, it can flood the network quickly and use up a larger proportion of available bandwidth. If this happens, particularly at peak times during the day, it reduces the speed of activities such as web browsing and email for others using the network.
By managing our network and applying some traffic management profiles it allows us to ensure that users who download excessive amounts of data, primarily through the use of peer to peer applications and other file sharing websites do not impact the experience of others. Without managing this other users could experience slower speeds than they expect, especially during peak periods.
We are absolutely committed to providing you with the best possible broadband service, and by effectively and fairly traffic managing, we will be able to:
- Protect your interactive activities such as web browsing, emailing and the use of cloud hosting services
- Provide a service relative to the amount you and each customer pays in terms of usage allowances and experience
How will traffic management apply to me?
An extremely low proportion of our customers will ever need their usage to be traffic managed based on the habits we see across our network. These measures will only impact those that are heavy users and using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth.
If your usage is continually excessive, unfair, you continually download large files at peak times and your high level of usage is likely to affect other users’ enjoyment of our broadband service, we reserve the right to throttle any protocol or service, to upgrade a customer to a package more suited for their usage, or in extreme cases, suspend or terminate a customer’s ability to access our broadband services. The amount of data you can download or upload is governed by the usage cap relevant to your particular product. Please refer to the product information for our broadband services.
How do I avoid being traffic managed?
Our 1:1 product users do not need to worry about traffic management as they always have dedicated access to their subscribed line speeds. We ask users of our shared services (example 1:2 / 1:4 etc.) to consider the times during the day when you are performing very heavy downloads and uploads. This is particularly relevant for peer to peer applications and we recommend that you set these larger file downloads between 18:00 – 08:00. Most of these applications allow you to set schedules, so they automatically connect overnight.
SBPL’s Traffic Management policy is based on current best internet industry practice and draws on the collective experience of users and service providers across the internet community. We may change the Traffic Management Policy from time to time. Please keep up to date with our Traffic Management Policy by checking on a regular basis to ensure that you will not be affected.
What are the traffic restrictions on domestic broadband packages?
During peak hours (10:00 to 18:00), we do restrict the speed at which you can download (to 0.5Mbps). However, if you schedule your heavy usage between 18:00 and 08:00 you’ll get access to your available line speed without any restrictions.