Fair Use for BT Unlimited Broadband Traffic Shaping

Have you ever noticed large variations in your broadband performance? If so, there are a number of factors you might want to check before putting it down to bad luck. It may be that you, like me, are having your download bandwidth silently restricted by your ISP.

My broadband is supplied by BT and known as BT Business Broadband Share, I’ve been a BT customer for a number of years now and I think the equivalent (and, I notice, somewhat cheaper) current package is known as BT Business Total Broadband – Option 3. Both packages are advertised with the term ‘unlimited usage’ and both refer you, in the small print, to BT’s fair use policy.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a heavy user of broadband. I think I may have purchased and downloaded a dozen music files from the Internet, in my life, and I have used the BBC iPlayer to download a similar number of TV programmes, although I was careful to tick the little box that prevented the iPlayer from re-sharing those files after I had finished watching them. I download, perhaps, 6 large DVD size images from Microsoft’s MSDN subscriber site a year as part of my developer network subscription. I connect to the office with a VPN connection to collect email and occasionally use remote desktop or VNC to connect to one of several remote servers to perform evening or weekend maintenance. Other than that, I browse the web and listen again to a repeat of a Radio 4 audio programme on average about once a month. None of these things are particularly expensive in terms of bandwidth.

We are only a short distance from our local exchange and so usually comfortably achieve download bandwidth figures of over 6M bits/sec, but recently I had noticed much longer delays in displaying web pages from all sources and interrupted video streaming. We have a number of other PCs in the house on our wireless LAN and they were all experiencing similar problems so I checked the router (a BT supplied 2-Wire 1800) and noted that its broadband monitor showed low download and upload demand. This made me suspicious that there was a problem with the wireless network itself and so I checked the various settings, rebooted PCs and restarted the router and all of this made no difference at all to the download performance. I even chose to accept the firmware upgrade that the router was offering me in the hope that it might fix the problem but, rather ironically, the only visible difference I could detect was that the router’s nice bandwidth monitoring page has now been removed which means that I no longer have any indication of the upload or download bandwidth in use at any given point in time.

Noting that the download bandwidth was low, and knowing that our line normally performs well, I assumed then that the problem might be congestion at the exchange. There are good congestion checking tools at nildram and plusnet and plenty of information about broadband exchanges at samknows.com. These resources all suggested that my local exchange had no congestion issue.

Puzzled, I thought I’d monitor the bandwidth and see if I could determine a pattern. I initially suspected some form of interference from, say, a poor electrical connection or a fluorescent light, both of which can have this effect on broadband speeds, or so I had read.

You can check you broadband bandwidth with the excellent speed checker at speedtest.net which allows you to maintain a nice record of the measurements you have taken over a period of time or the less impressive BT offering at speedtester.bt.com which I found had to be run with administrative privileges on my Vista system but which does additionally provide you with what BT call your IP profile. There is an excellent description of this IP Profile at kitz.co.uk and a wealth of background information about ADSL too.

According to speedtester.bt.com my IP profile was 6.5Mbits/sec which was what I had expected:

IP profile for your line is - 6500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)  7616 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 2569 kbps

But depending on the time of day that I ran the test the IP throughput would vary from the expected 6340 kbps to as low as 379 kbps in the evening, rising through 3788 kbps after 11pm back to full speed after midnight and during the daytime. I saw this pattern repeat itself over a number of days.

Armed with this information I began to become suspicious that my line was being traffic shaped in some way. I called BT Business Broadband support and the nice lady there confirmed that my number was being restricted but she seemed surprised that I had not received an email alerting me to this. Broadband support said they were unable to give me any more information other than to say that it was due to excessive usage and gave me a phone number to ring to investigate further. That number turned out to be for reporting security breaches but they, in turn, gave me the email address: liteusage@btbroadbandoffice.com to which issues regarding traffic shaping and bandwidth restriction can be addressed.

I understood from the phone conversation that it was BT’s policy to review these restrictions at the billing points and that the restrictions could be gradually reduced if not completely removed when the excessive usage ceased. This meant that I should expect restrictions to be in place for several more weeks until BT saw fit to restore my service.

I emailed a request asking if they could help me to:

1. Understand why the restriction has been applied .
2. Help me get it released as soon as possible as it is interfering
   with my business use of this line.
3. Give me an idea of the volume (or nature) of downloads that must have
   been present to have this restriction applied so that I can ensure
   it doesn’t happen again.

and the reply I got back said:

From the description you have given it appears that you are being
traffic shaped under the terms of our Fair Usage Policy, this is
why your connection is slow between 5pm and midnight.

and then followed this up with the surprising statement:

I am sorry but we cannot lift this restriction for you as our suppliers implement these measures.

Neither of these was particularly helpful or acceptable so I thought I’d better have a closer look at the fair use policy to see what I had done wrong and that is where the confusion really begins. The fair use policy doesn’t explain what BT consider fair use to be. I’d be only to happy to make a considered judgement about whether my £50/month unlimited broadband package was worth that amount if I could see what I was allowed to use it for. The policy explains in its three major sections:

Why do we have a fair use policy?

BT explain that their “… Fair Use Policy manages inappropriate use and makes sure the service can be used fairly by everyone”. And they define inappropriate use:

“A very small number of our customers use their broadband service inappropriately, for example when sending or downloading very large files, or using ‘peer to peer’ and file sharing software (which may be sending and receiving video and other large files constantly)”

So their concern appears to be related to the transmission of very large files and “peer to peer” or file sharing software. There is no mention of an acceptable download (or upload) usage figure, especially for their unlimited services.

How does the fair use Policy work?

Quite simply:

“If you regularly use the service inappropriately during peak hours, and we believe this is unfairly affecting other customers’ use of the service, we’ll manage your bandwidth during peak times (which could result in reduced service speeds).”

The policy clearly states that BT will control bandwidth for what they deem inappropriate use (earlier rather feebly defined as something involving large files and, possibly “peer to peer” and file sharing software) if this is done regularly (again undefined). There is no indication of how long they will continue to manage bandwidth for or an advanced warning that it might be about to happen. They do say that:

“If you continue to use your service inappropriately we reserve the right to end your agreement with us and will give you notice before doing so.”

But, of course, if you weren’t aware that you were using the service in an inappropriate way to begin with how are you supposed to know that you have continued to use it inappropriately. This seems to me to be an opportunity for BT to silently manage bandwidth to whatever extent suits them whilst continuing to charge the full rate for the service.

How do I know if the Fair Use Policy affects me?

BT say: “Our Fair Use Policy applies to all our customers but it’ll only actually affect you if you’re one of the very few customers who make inappropriate use of our service”. So another recursive and incomplete piece of information.

But don’t worry because:

“If you don’t use peer to peer, file sharing or other inappropriate software and you’re not, for example, constantly downloading or uploading: videos or very large files, you’re unlikely to be affected by our Fair Use Policy.”

So quite simply, don’t trouble your pretty little heads over our fair usage policy as it is unlikely to affect you. But hang on a minute,

• I use the BBC iPlayer and that is peer-to-peer file sharing software,
• I pay several hundred pounds a year to Microsoft to allow me to download operating system DVD images or sometimes videos from their web site and those are large files.

So, on both those counts BT can legitimately claim that I have fallen foul of their fair use policy and without warning restrict my broadband connection to whatever extent they wish and for however long they wish and still continue to bill me the same amount of money even though they neither specify the acceptable usage limits or provide me with any mechanism by which I can determine my current usage?

That doesn’t seem like fair use to me.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• BTMYPLACE.com: things to do in London on your mobile
• UK broadband woes – what’s happening with BT? And should we be worried!?
• ASA upholds complaint against Orange
• DLS 101: 6 free programs for casual users that download torrents