BT Broadband FAQ

BT Broadband fair usage policy

Wednesday 2 May, 2012

By Helen Thomas

Answer: A fair usage policy is BT's way of restricting your broadband usage if it's having a significant impact on other users. BT Broadband (www.BT.com) is not the only provider to impose a fair usage policy - the majority of providers have some kind of fair usage or traffic management policy in place.

If you've signed up for a package that's advertised as "unlimited", you might be concerned about your fair usage policy and how it affects the way you can use your broadband connection.

In practical terms, the fair usage system is imposed because your connection is almost certainly shared by anything up to 50 households. If one or more households are downloading excessive amounts of data it could have a negative impact on everyone sharing that connection, causing their download speeds to drop. So, fair usage policies are, theoretically at least, meant to protect the service that the majority of us receive.

Video: What is a fair usage policy?

If BT is concerned about the amount you're downloading, after a month or two they will get in touch to ask you to curb your usage. After this, if they're still not happy, they might start charging you extra or slowing your speeds during a given month. This typically applies to less than 1 per cent of all customers according to BT so most of us won't need to give it a second thought.

If you're looking for broadband without a fair usage policy, you can turn to Sky Broadband (www.Sky.com). Sky's up to 14Mb Broadband Unlimited connection, and it's up to 38Mb and 76Mb fibre packages are truly unlimited - no fair usage or traffic management however much you download.

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