"We are writing to some of our customers to let them know about changes to our traffic management policy," says a statement from Virgin Media. "As part of this educational exercise we are letting customers know what the changes mean to them, and why they may see their speeds reduced for short periods at certain times of the day."
In practice, it works like this:
– M package customers can download a maximum of 900MB during the day before having their maximum download speed cut down to 1Mbit/s, from an original 2Mbit/s to.
– L and XL package customers can download a maximum of 2400MB and 6000MB, respectively, before the company slows them down by three quarters. Originally, their download speeds are up to 10MBit/s and 20MBit/s, respectively.
Officially, these rules are supposed to ensure that some users won’t abuse the network and get more than their “fair share”, as the company puts it. On the other hand, one would wonder what’s the point of fair share when one is promits no limitations?