PERFORMANCE

Option 4 - this is our no nonsense up to 8Mb bundled broadband product and will satisfy the needs of the vast majority of home internet users in the UK. Free UK calls to 01 & 02 numbers all day every day plus UNLIMITED broadband usage between midnight and 6pm (18 hours a day) and 20Gb usage limit between 6pm and midnight. Most of our customers download less than 12Gb per month.

Option 4 Pro - this provides the same great value as Option 4 but with enhanced performance. It is ideal for users who download lots of music or movies in the evenings plus it gives the best speed possible at all times making it ideal for gamers etc. Between 6pm and midnight the usage limit is raised to a massive 40Gb per month in addition to the UNLIMITED usage for the remaining 18 hours per day. Speed is enhanced too.

What affects my broadband connection?
How fast your Internet access is doesn’t just depend on the speed of your broadband connection. It also depends on how many people are sharing the same connection with you.

It’s like travelling on the M1 from London to Birmingham...
If the motorway is clear, you can be in Birmingham in no time. If it’s the rush hour and there are lots of other cars and lorries on the motorway it could take much longer. Similarly, the speed at which your PC can download information from the Internet depends on how many other people are using the bandwidth at the same time.

Many broadband providers do not care too much about this
Especially if they have tied you in to a 12 or 18 month contract. They probably figure they’ve got your money and if your service slows down at busy times, so be it - remember your contract with us is only 28 days.

DST care -
we need to - because it is a 28 day Agreement and so easy for you to leave our service we must deliver good service to you to make you want to stay with DST. Price is important too, that's why we give you the choice of 2 great products, both providing excellent savings against our main competitors, enabling you to choose what performance level is best for your needs, or simply put - how many users are sharing the bandwidth.

Do I need the enhanced performance?
You decide, our 2 broadband bundles, both based on performance, are ideal for you. Both products provide great value and when demand is very high our Option 4 Pro customers are less affected than Option 4.

The old ‘contention ratio’ method is no longer used by the industry for 8Mbps services. Therefore, we are unable to give a specific ratio figure as this will vary from minute to minute depending on the number of people using our network.

FAIR USAGE

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.