O2 imposes download restrictions on Home Access broadband users

Customers of O2′s ‘Home Access’ broadband package will see new traffic management policy restricting their monthly usage to 10GB. According to ISPreview, the ISP has been sending letters to some of the customers who have repeatedly breached this fair usage cap, warning of disconnection to follow, if they continue to make excessive downloads.

New download restrictions will affect only Home Access, the BT based ‘unlimited’ service offered to O2 customers who live outside its LLU network. The package, not only offers lesser speeds (8Mbps) but also cost a bit more, comparing to O2′s unbundled products like Standard, Premium and Pro. The new restrictions would also slow down the speeds of Access customers to just 50Kbps when they access P2P sites during peak hours.

Nearly 90% of the Home Access customers use less than 10GB per month which the ISP thinks as the reasonable limit that all users will need to follow to avoid extreme circumstances like termination of their accounts.

“If we’ve asked you to cut back, it’s because you’re consistently above the monthly average.” the ISP has clarified on the issue.

O2 says its recent traffic measures aim at improving the experience for the majority of the customers on the Home Access service.

“We are also making the service run more efficiently by updating the hardware and software that runs the Access service.” O2 said in a statement issued in March 2010.