Acceptable use policy changed by Virgin Media

Communications giant Virgin Media recently announced the completion of its 50Mbps high speed broadband rollout, and has now decided that in line with this the acceptable usage policy will also undergo changes.

Earlier this week the media and communications giant Virgin Media celebrated the completion of the rollout of its 50Mbps broadband service, which was made available to over twelve million homes across the UK. The media giant has now also announced that it is making changes to its acceptable usage policy, and will be changing its speed throttling regulations.

Virgin Media currently throttles the speed of around five percent of its subscribers, and this is done during peak times to minimise on network problems for other users. As a result of the changes that are being made the level of users that will now have their speeds throttled during peak times will fall to just two percent, and this two percent will be those that Virgin Media considers to have the most detrimental effect on the network in terms of affecting access for other users.

The acceptable usage policy from Virgin Media has been reworded in order to reflect the changes that are being put into place, and the policy now states: “In isolated cases (currently less than 0.1 per cent of customers) where excessive network usage at busy times (9am to 9pm) is having a detrimental effect on other users, we may need to take appropriate action in accordance with the terms of this AUP to notify users of the impact they are having and require them to move some of their activity into the less busy period.”

Some industry officials have speculated over whether the changes put into place by Virgin Media are designed to try and get heavier Internet users to take out the most expensive, new 50Mbps service rather than sticking with the slower but cheaper service.