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Direct Save Telecom Broadband Usage Policy

Introduction

The following Policy contains rules that govern your use of Direct Save Telecoms services ("Service") and forms part of the terms and conditions of use of the Service. This Policy may be amended from time to time. An up-to-date copy of the current policy will be maintained on our website at www.directsavetelecom.co.uk/up.html
It is Direct Save Telecoms intent to provide our customers with the best Internet service possible. In order to accomplish this task, we have adopted this Direct Save Telecoms Usage Policy (the "UP" or "Policy"). This Policy outlines acceptable and fair use of Direct Save Telecoms Internet services (the "Service"), as well as permissible and prohibited conduct for using the Service to access the Internet. This Policy, including its customer use restrictions, is in addition to the restrictions contained in the Direct Save Telecom General Terms and Conditions.
It is the responsibility of all Direct Save Telecom customers and all others who have access to Direct Save Telecom's network ("customer," "you," or "your"), to comply with this UP and all Direct Save Telecom policies. As a Service customer, it is your responsibility to secure your computer equipment so that it is not subject to external threats such as viruses, spam, and other methods of intrusion. Failure to comply with these or any other Direct Save Telecom policies could result in the suspension or termination of your Service. If you do not agree to comply with all of these policies including the UP, you must immediately stop use of the Service and notify Direct Save Telecom so that your account may be closed.

Acceptable Usage Policy

The following are not permitted:
Spamming Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet (known as "spamming"). It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward Direct Save Telecom, but also because it can overload Direct Save Telecom's network and disrupt service to Direct Save Telecom subscribers. Also, maintaining an open SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, Direct Save Telecom has the discretion to determine from all of the evidence whether the email recipients were from an "opt-in" email list.
Intellectual Property Violations Engaging in any activity that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, software piracy, and patents held by individuals, corporations, or other entities. Also, engaging in activity that violates privacy, publicity, or other personal rights of others. Direct Save Telecom is required by law to remove or block access to customer content upon receipt of a proper notice of copyright infringement. It is also Direct Save Telecom's policy to terminate the privileges of customers who commit repeat violations of copyright laws.
Obscene Speech or Materials Using Direct Save Telecom's network to advertise, transmit, store, post, display, or otherwise make available child pornography or obscene speech or material. Direct Save Telecom is required by law to notify law enforcement agencies when it becomes aware of the presence of child pornography on or being transmitted through Direct Save Telecom's network.
Defamatory or Abusive Language Using Direct Save Telecom's network as a means to transmit or post defamatory, harassing, abusive, or threatening language.
Facilitating Denial of Service Attacks Using Direct Save Telecom’s network to launch, control or deliver any form of denial of service attack.
Forging of Headers Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the originator of the message where the intention is to maliciously deceive the recipient.
Illegal or Unauthorised Access to Other Computers or Networks Accessing illegally or without authorisation computers, accounts, or networks belonging to another party, or attempting to penetrate security measures of another individual's system (often known as "hacking"). Also, any activity that might be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration (i.e. port scan, stealth scan, or other information gathering activity).
Distribution of Internet Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, or Other Destructive Activities Distributing information regarding the creation of and sending Internet viruses, worms, Trojan horses, pinging, flooding, mailbombing, or denial of service attacks. Also, activities that disrupt the use of or interfere with the ability of others to effectively use the network or any connected network, system, service, or equipment.
Facilitating a Violation of this UP Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this UP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mailbombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software.
Usenet Groups Direct Save Telecom reserves the right not to accept postings from newsgroups where we have actual knowledge that the content of the newsgroup violates the UP.
Other Illegal Activities Engaging in activities that are determined to be illegal, including but not limited to advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available pyramid schemes, fraudulently charging credit cards, and pirating software.
Other Activities Engaging in activities, whether lawful or unlawful, that Direct Save Telecom determines to be harmful to its subscribers, operations, reputation, goodwill, or customer relations.

Fair Usage Policy

Direct Save Telecom is committed to ensuring our customers receive the best possible broadband performance for each of our broadband packages.
To achieve this goal we provide a contended broadband service. This means our Internet bandwidth is shared with all our customers at any one point in time. The amount that we contend will depend on whether you are a business or residential customer and the type of service you buy from us. Contention is a proven method for providing fast and cost effective services and is used by nearly every broadband service provider in the UK.

Most home broadband users use less than 12Gb per month, the table below shows what can be done during one month and still only use less than 1Gb.
Typical broadband usage  generating 1Gb
40 high-quality photos sent/received = 40Mb
40 low-quality photos sent/received = 4Mb
80 sound tracks downloaded = 320Mb
80 short video clips downloaded/watched = 360Mb
4 hours listening to online radio = 60Mb
1000 emails sent/received (without attachments) = 5Mb
10 small software downloads = 10Mb
4 large software downloads = 200Mb
Total monthly broadband usage = 0.98Gb
applicable products
The fair usage / acceptable limit policy currently relates to the Broadband services listed below. The table below shows the number of gigabytes (GB) per month that maybe transferred without incurring over usage charges.

Why do we have a fair usage policy on Broadband?

Most customers' favourite time to go online is between 6pm and midnight, and we want to make sure that we offer an excellent service to everyone during these peak hours. That's why we have invested in traffic management tools that share our Internet bandwidth between all our customers.

Our popular Option 4 and Option 4 Pro Broadband products have a fair usage download limit during peak hours of 20Gb and 40Gb respectively. If you constantly download extremely large files, you should consider scheduling a proportion of these to non peak times to preserve an excellent service for other users.

What is unfair usage?

A small number (under 1%) of our customers use the service unfairly by taking up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth between peak hours. By constantly downloading extremely large movie and data files, 24 hours per day, every day, they affect other people's broadband service.

If your peak time usage exceeds what is fair for your product we will temporarily reduce your connection speed during peak hours to 256kbps to ensure you don't affect other peoples service. This speed will restrict your ability to download large files as quickly as normal, but will not affect web browsing or email. Your speed will run as normal at all other times.

Will my connection be slowed down?

Unlikely, less than 1% of our customers use our service unfairly. You should only be affected if you constantly download excessive quantities of extremely large files during peak hours

How do I know if I have been slowed down?

You'll notice that downloads are taking longer than normal. However this will be reset at the start of next month. If this occurs regularly each month you should consider upgrading to Option 4 Pro.

Our Fair Usage Policy operates in addition to our broadband performance system. read more

As a result of this policy the majority of our customers will benefit from faster speeds and an improved service.

Additional fair usage terms for customers on packages purchased prior to 25th September 2006 (Not Option 4) - A small number of customers use more than their “fair share” of Internet bandwidth. We often see less than 3% of customers using a disproportionate amount of Internet bandwidth. These customers degrade the performance of our broadband service by taking bandwidth away from customers who use the service fairly.
In summary, we wish to be fair to you and our services are “unlimited” for normal usage at home.
You should only be affected by the fair usage policy if you use file sharing software such as peer to peer (p2p), file transfer (ftp) or binary newsgroups (USENET).
If you exceed the fair usage / acceptable limit for your product then you will be charged £1.95 per 1Gb broadband, contention will be increased and the performance of your broadband will degrade. We will email or write to you to confirm you have exceeded your fair usage limit. If your usage continues to remain above the acceptable limits for your product we will upgrade your account to one of our “Pro” package so that you can, in future, avoid these over usage charges.

Direct Save Telecom's Rights

Compliance with this Policy is a contractual requirement. We reserve the right to suspend, restrict or terminate your access to the Service if either you or a third party accessing your Website or Your Equipment causes, or is likely to cause, our Service to be interrupted, damaged or impaired.
Offending material may be removed without prior notice. We may retain a copy of such material for our records.
We reserve the right to forward offending material to the police or other regulatory authorities in the event that we are requested to do so or where a complaint is made about your use of the Service and is deemed by us to be inconsistent with this Policy.

Complaints

If you consider that one of our customers is in breach of this policy, please send details of the incident to us using the form found on our contact us page.
Please provide as much information as possible including the date, time, time zone and IP address if applicable, together with all other relevant information. These should be provided in plain text within the email and not as attachments.