Although ADSL broadband services allow you to be stay 'connected' 24 x 7 (subject to required maintenance etc.) they are not designed to provide sustained high-speed data transfers.

ADSL broadband services are 'shared' access products that operate on a Contention Ratio to provide a high-speed but cost effective service.

We require that users do not make unreasonable demands on the network as this will compromise the service for both themselves and other users. If accounts are found to be making excessive use of their broadband service they may find their service restricted or if necessary may have their service suspended or cancelled.

For details of the quotas allowed for each ADSL broadband account see our Acceptable Usage Policy for further details.

If we were not to limit the amount of traffic used by only a small proportion of users it would leave us (and other broadband ISP's) with only these options:

1. Increase the cost of the service for all users - this would not seem fair as it would mean the majority of customers using the service within normal / reasonable limits would be subsidising the excess usage of a minority of very heavy usage users.
   
   
2. Leave it to continue unchecked - this would cause a reduction in the quality of service to all users as the 50:1 or 20:1 contention ratios would start to become apparent. Again we would not like to see this happen as a 500 kbit/s service at 50:1 contention (for instance our most popular ADSL 500 Solo package) could end up giving just 10 kbit/s performance (slower even than a traditional modem connection) if all 50 users were using it at once!

Please contact us if you have any other questions.