VM have confirmed that they have now started a nationwide packet shaping system to restrict high usage customers. The rollout will occur concurrently with the new 20Meg updates.
For a XL customer, the system will mean that they are restricted to downloading a maximum of 3Gigs of data between peak hours of 4pm-midnight before falling foul of the traffic shaping which will then downgrade the line to 5Meg/256k for a period of 4 hours.
M and L customers will be restricted to 350Mb/750Mb respectively before being restricted during peak hours.
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
I never thought I would say it... but I miss NTL already
