Unsuspecting broadband users continue to be misled by unscrupulous Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who market capped broadband products as uncapped. Unknowingly, many of the uncapped broadband packages on offer have a fair usage or traffic management policy, allowing ISPs to impose limits on downloading or enforce throttling.
Unlike most others, OpenWeb delivers “truly unlimited” broadband with no download limits or throttling. OpenWeb shapes according to how busy the network is at any given time, but it never throttles. When the network is not busy, it completely unshapes the accounts.
OpenWeb CEO Keoma Wright says OpenWeb does not log usage stats on its uncapped accounts. “Why should we care how much data our client has used on the account? Unlimited means just that. Some ISPs monitor client data so that they can enforce drastic throttling policies, making an account slow or even unusable. By default, we don’t monitor anyone’s usage on uncapped accounts.”
He points to the fair usage policy as a possible catch. “Unsuspecting customers are often limited by a fair usage policy, the small print used by most ISPs who attempt to keep their cyber traffic down. These policies are normally designed to protect the people who might be affected by the heavy downloading of others.”
Those most likely to be affected by a fair usage policy are online gamers, users of peer-to-peer networks uploading and downloading lots of films and music and people working from home and remotely connecting to the office.
“While it may seem unfair if your broadband connection is being throttled, your provider is only trying to ensure that everyone has a good user experience. However, OpenWeb uses traffic shaping as a way of controlling users’ downloads during peak hours. This is the reason why heavy users should schedule downloads for overnight when their speed is less likely to be throttled,” he explains.
