BT Charging For High Bandwidth Usage

U.K. Internet service provider BT has sent letters to 3,200 subscribers letting them know that their usage exceeds the 40GB per month download limit to which they agreed in the terms of their service. The letters inform customers that they must either pay a surcharge for the extra usage or their service will be disconnected. The ISP does not have an automatic shutoff for users who exceed the limit, and officials from BT said they are willing to tolerate occasional violations. The users contacted, however, are regularly downloading far more than the limit, with some routinely downloading 200GB every month. Such a volume of downloads corresponds to approximately 50,000 songs. A spokesperson from BT said it would be fair to call these users “broadband hogs” and noted, “You would have to be downloading pretty much all day, every day, to manage that level of downloading.” BT sent similar letters to 1,800 individuals in October, and while some users did agree to pay for their usage, most were cut off from BT.

ZDNet, 27 March 2006