A-base Computers - Information Sheet on OfCom Code of Practice for BT Retail Broadband Customers as at 24/6/08

Ofcom Code of Practice Relating to Broadband Speed and Fair Use Policy

What’s the Code All About?

Since broadband first arrived, customers have been subject to many different messages from different service providers about broadband speeds and how much data they are allowed to use. Messages such as ‘up to 8 Meg’ has led customers to expect that the product they are buying will allow them to experience 8Meg speeds on a day to day basis. Customers don’t necessarily understand the ‘up to’ statement, nor are they clear what ‘Fair Use Policy Applies’ means as service providers have not adopted a common approach to presenting this information. Ofcom has therefore launched a voluntary Code of Practice around this in order to help customers understand what they are buying and what to expect.

What's in the Code?

The Code will address five main areas: 1st Principle: Training “The ISPs must use their best endeavours to procure that all of their representatives involved in selling or promoting their broadband services are trained appropriately and that they have sufficient understanding of the products and services they are promoting and selling.” 2nd Principle: Information at point of sale. This relates to providing ‘best efforts’ information at point of sale: ensuring that the sale can only be completed when the customer has been notified of the estimated speed to the nearest half Meg. It also requests that customers are encouraged to make a note of their estimated line speed at point of sale or provide them with a record – written or online. ISPs will be expected to provide information on throughput speeds and how that relates to line speed. 3rd Principle: Accuracy of information provided by ISPs Ensure line checker remains accurate. 4th Principle: Managing consumers’ speed-related problems “ISPs should be prepared to manage customers’ problems when customers report that they don’t achieve the estimated access line speed provided at point of sale.”. 5th Principle: Presentation of broadband information on the website “ISPs must use their best endeavours to set out clearly, and in a prominent place on their websites (e.g. within help or FAQs sections), information relating to their respective policies on fair usage; traffic management and traffic shaping“

Broadband Speeds

BT existing broadband products for new sale, are described as ‘Up to 8 Mbps’, however the actual throughput speed that the customer is likely to experience is dependent on many factors. An initial line speed check is undertaken at the point of order. This is an indication of what the line speed could possibly be based on distance from the exchange but the actual speed cannot be known until the line has been activated and is in use. See below for details of what affects the throughput. The line checker gives a theoretical “best speed range” and does not guarantee a speed or throughput. For the first 10 days of service the exchange is testing the capability of the line to get the best speed and performance. Once it has reached the optimum speed available to your line and router, it will settle to that speed. In most cases, the shorter the line, the higher the speed. The average-length phone line has been shown to support a speed around 4Mbit/s

Actual Throughput Speed – What dictates what the customer will get in practice?

Attaching more than one computer to their connection - capacity between the users will be shared The processing power of the computer itself especially if this is the first time the computer is connecting to the internet (the extra load of security software, email programs) Quality of extension wiring (ethernet cables or wireless connections can be faster than USB). Using filters and separating the broadband from any heavy duty electrical equipment will also help improve performance Ensuring that filters are used where appropriate Is the speed the same for both Upstream and Downstream? Total Business Broadband speed is not the same in both directions. Downstream (from the internet to the customer) is what we advertise as the “up to 8Mbit/s” Most users of Broadband are downstream users (e.g. downloading files, web pages from the internet) Upstream speed is significantly less (under 1Mbit)

Fair Use Policy
What is BT Business’ Fair Use Policy?

BT Business broadband has a Fair Use Policy to ensure that customers who disproportionately use the service do not impact the experience for the whole customer base. Under Fair Use Policy, if a customer’s usage is extremely heavy, they will have speed restrictions imposed at certain times of day. This is all covered under their standard Terms and Conditions - http://www.btbroadbandoffice.com/products/terms_and_conditions and Fair Use Policy http://www.btbroadbandoffice.com/products/fairusepolicy
BT believe that this is fair to the majority of their customers ; 97% of their customer base will not be impacted by the Fair Use Policy at all. BT Business Broadband has two discrete product types: Limited - Option 1 Unlimited - Option 2, Option 3, Network and Network Premium Option 1 has an inclusive usage limit of 10Gb Regardless of whether a product is limited or unlimited, all products are subject to our Fair Use Policy. Option 1 10Gb per month (Fair Usage Policy applies if customer exceeds excess charge bands i.e. if they go over 20Gb) Option 2 Unlimited with Fair Usage Policy Option 3 Unlimited with Fair Usage Policy Network & Network Premium Unlimited with Fair Usage Policy

Why Have a Fair Use Policy?

BT have usage allowances so they can provide a great value service at the right price and still manage costs. Where they have unlimited products BT use Fair Use Policies to ensure the majority users are not adversely impacted by the small minority who use a disproportionately high share of the network.
How Much are Option 1 Customers Charged if They Go Over Their 10Gb Limit? If Option 1 users are likely to exceed their usage allowance in a certain month BT email them at their primary user email address (@btconnect.com) as per their Terms and Conditions. These are sent at 80% ie 8Gb and at each stage they pass through a charging band: • 10.01-13Gb £4 • 13.1-16Gb £8 • 16.1-20Gb £12 • Over 20Gb £25 • At 20Gb users are also warned they may be subject to FUP if usage becomes excessive.
How Much is 10Gb? What Does it Mean? Everything that the customer sends or receives over the Internet is ‘bits’ of data. Each ‘bit’ of data has a different size and is measured in Kilobytes (KB), Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB). The average email is around 4KB, a digital photo is around 1MB and a music track is around 5MB (1MB=1024KB, 1GB=1024MB

When and How is the Fair Usage Policy applied to heavy users?

The FUP applies to BT's heaviest users, who currently account for under 2.5% of their customers, but whose excessive usage negatively impacts the remaining 97.5% of our customers at peak times 17:00-24:00. It does not apply outside of these times. • Majority of these FUP impacted users don’t notice or complain about deterioration in the experience. The very few that do, are generally among the heaviest 0.5% of their customer who typically tend to be doing over 100Gb per month and running bandwidth hungry applications between 17:00 and 24:00 • The action BT take against their heavy users is to restrict their download speeds during peak times only whether this is HTTP web browsing, or other applications. • Although they restrict the speed, these customers can still use their service so ability to upload and download remains. • If customers don’t use P2P or file sharing software or if they don’t download very large files, then it’s unlikely they will be heavy users and therefore won’t be affected by this policy. • If a customer does not use the service at these peak times they will not see an impact. • The top 0.4% of users who have our strongest controls applied all average over 100GB. Most do not notice Fair Use Policy controls except where they use the service during the 17:00-24:00 period with impact most noticeable between 20:00-22:00 • These restrictions do not affect separately paid for BT services such as Business Broadband Voice (VoIP) as this usage does not count towards their broadband usage allowance. • Many of BT's competitors are having to take the same action as BT because they face the same challenges in managing bandwidth usage. If they don’t, their quality of service may decline as their costs rise

How does the FUP operate?

At the beginning of each month a customer total usage record is reset and starts afresh as zero.
Once a customer’s usage triggers the FUP, the FUP controls are applied each day during the peak hours for the following 30 day duration, at the end of which the controls are removed. • If the customer’s usage in the new month is below the FUP trigger point, then no FUP controls are applied until their usage breaches the FUP Trigger level again. At this point, the FUP controls are applied again each day during the peak hours for the following 30 day duration, at the end of which the controls are removed. • If the customer’s usage in the new month is beyond the FUP trigger point, then the FUP controls are re-applied for the following 30 day duration, at the end of which the controls are removed. This process is repeated each month
What are the FUP trigger levels? There are no set levels for when FUP starts to apply as it governed by a series of factors but are applied to no more than the top 2.5% of users. However, BT's top level of controls currently consistently applies at 100Gb for Option 1 and 2 customers.
How does a customer get removed from FUP? The easiest way is for customer to reduce their usage or move heavy activity out of the 17:00-23:00 period so control impact is not a factor. BT leave removal to the system and do not manually remove customers from FUP except in very exceptional cases. There have been only 2 cases in last 2 years where the customers in question have committed to BTnet solutions with long lead times.

Emails:

Unlimited: BT do not send notification emails to customers before they go on FUP. Option 1: customers receive notification emails at 8Gb, 10Gb, 13Gb, 16Gb and 20Gb as long as they aren’t already on a FUP profile.