Fair Usage Policy

The Pipex Homecall Fair Usage Policy is designed to make sure your broadband service is quick and reliable whenever you use it.

Our Fair Usage tool automatically identifies the very small number of extremely heavy users and manages their bandwidth only during peak hours (6pm to 11pm Monday to Sunday, inc Bank Holidays), to protect the service for all our other customers. Outside peak hours, the use of the Internet by these heavy users is unaffected.

What is a 'heavy user'?

A very small number of customers use Peer-to-Peer or file-sharing software, which constantly send and receive video and other very large files throughout the day. This type of activity uses a lot of bandwidth and can significantly reduce the speed at which other customers can access the Internet during peak hours. Did you know, for example, that approximately 1% of customers use more than 30% of the available broadband bandwidth during peak hours? We don't believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers. We believe the Fair Usage Policy is the best approach. It protects the quality of service for the vast majority of our customers when they most use the service, while at the same time allowing the extremely heavy users to continue to send and receive large files without restriction outside of peak hours.

How do I know if I am likely to be affected by the Fair Usage Policy?

If you don't use Peer-to-Peer or file-sharing software it is highly unlikely that you will ever be affected by our Fair Usage Policy.

What happens to your broadband service if you are affected by the Fair Usage Policy?

During peak hours (6pm to 11pm Monday to Sunday, inc Bank Holidays), customers affected by the Fair Usage Policy will share bandwidth with each other and will be separated from other customers. The total amount of bandwidth available for affected customers to share will be at least as much as for those customers unaffected by the policy.

The speed that affected customers experience when downloading at peak hours will therefore depend on what other affected customers are doing. If they are all web-browsing and reading emails, then all affected customers experience normal broadband speed. If, on the other hand, they are using Peer-to-Peer or file-sharing software, they will experience slow broadband speed. Outside of peak hours, no restrictions will apply.