How much before you get a warning?

[Stickman]

We have a large family so we pay for the current top-end service from Virgin - the 50meg package. Between us we tend to upload about 350 gigabytes per month, and download about 650GB per month... so all in all about a terabyte per month of data transfered.

I've heard you can get warning letters or something if you use too much, and am trying to figure out roughly how much is "too much" - does anyone know? Their website doesn't really give details. Perhaps someone else who has had a letter could give me an idea of how much data they were getting through?

Cheers.

 

[Duke]

I've seen a few people with letters from them but not sure of any particular limit being mentioned. Might be worth searching their support forum for info.

Not sure how you're uploading/downloading that much data though, even with several users

 

[Zarf]

Its probably done on a case by case basis, whether you get a letter depends more on the extent of your impact on other users in your area than on any defined thresholds.

So if you are in a fairly popular area for cable, and are using more than your 'fair share' of the contended bandwidth during peak hours you're more likely to get a letter than someone in a less busy area who downloads the same amount but does it in the early hours of the morning.

 

[Surveyor]

Yes you get a warning letter. I've got one here.

In certain areas, I presume due to capacity problems, they warn you if you upload or download too much betwen 9am and 9pm.

If you ring and ask for an amount that is acceptable they can't give you an answer.

Their advice is to simply do less and hopefully you'll drop below the limit (whatever it is).

The chap I spoke to said it was quite acceptable to hammer the connection 9pm-9am but they're very hot on what you do 9am-9pm.

They seem to be taking this quite seriously.

First you get a warning letter.

Second you get a warning e-mail.

Third they suspend your service until you sign an agreement not to be a naughty boy again.

I'm hoping not to get to stage 3

All this money for a 50Mbit connection and I can mostly use it when I'm in bed

I can't wait for 100Mbit then that'll be twice as much I can't upload or download. At least I'll be not uploading and not downloading very quickly

 

[Benihana]

I don't quite understand how you're uploading that much? Is it a large family of HD videographers? Have you started a small hosting company in your lounge? Off-site data backup to the shed?

I consider myself a heavy user and hit about 50GB a month, unless you have a family of 20 heavy users...

 

[Kreeeee]

50GB isn't heavy use at all, the GF and I consume 80GB easily between us and we'd use a lot more if caps weren't a concern.

 

[hyperst]

lol, i got throttled the second day of having sky's connect service, they said i was in the highest users camp within a day of it being swithced on, i only downloaded Medal Of Honor of EADM, overnight that was aswell, thank your self lucky that you can get away with so much, trouble is it's people like you that make the innocent users suffer

 

[KIA]

You didn't have to pick Sky Connect. You have plenty of choice.

 

[tibbsey]

Limited to 40GB here on O2 Access. Would use a considerable amount more than that were there no (or a less ridiculous) cap.