| FAIR USAGE POLICY - AN EXPLANATION. Across the whole spectrum of Astra2Connect users throughout Europe we have found that the average monthly download per residential user is between 1.2 gig - 1.6gig. of bandwidth per month. This is based on what we call “serious usage” i.e. email, online banking, booking flights, distance learning ,web surfing, school homework,music, general file transfer such as Word or Excel documents. There is also a certain amount of entertainment download included but it is necessary to comprehend that graphics and videos use up quite a lot of bandwidth. The purpose of the Fair Usage Policy, as the name implies, is to try to dispense the amount of bandwidth available as fairly as possible across all of our users. We have established that 10% of our customers account for 60% of our bandwidth usage. These customers are what we call “Power Users “ and if we could get rid of them there would, in essence, be no need for a Fair Usage Policy ! The fact that they are still with us means that the solution available to us is to cut back their speed at peak times and thereby force them to download at off peak times. We do this with reference to the attached FUP chart below. For instance if you sign up for a 1meg. download package you are allowed use up to 1.4gig before being cut back and the cutback in this instance is to 768Kb. It is apparent that if you stay within the European download norm you will nearly always have the speed you signed up for. Another factor needing to be taken into consideration is the Congestion Factor which occurs during peak usage times - for instance between 5.00pm and 11.00pm each night and at differing times over the weekend. This relates to the number of people using the service at that time. In the case of the Astra2Connect service the highest congestion factor experienced to date has been slightly less than 4 but the average is usually 2. If you go online at 8.00pm in the evening and your speed has been cut to 768 you will experience a further cut by a factor of 2 down to 384 Kbs. Your speed will constantly vary over the usage period. For instance the 384 that you experience at 8.00 pm may go to 512 at 8.05pm depending on the number of people logging on and logging off and the length of time that they stay online for. Although a direct comparison with ADSL (broadband over telephone ) is not readily available they have, for instance, a contention ratio of 48:1 for example. The speeds referred to above would be comparable if not better than the speeds available over ADSL during peak periods. The congestion factor mentioned above disappears at certain times ie. after midnight, early morning etc. to the extent that a user who has been cut back to 768 or 512 because of Fair Usage could find that after midnight not alone would there be no congestion factor in operation but that the original FUP cut back would not operate either once the bandwidth was available. In order to curtail your unnecessary bandwidth usage you may need to do the following : Use a programme called Download Manager or other such to arrange to carry out your major downloads at off peak hours. ie. a YouTube video or the like. Check all your Microsoft applications that they are not automatically downloading upgrades without your knowledge (thus using your bandwidth ) Check that your anti virus and anti spam software is properly set up on your computer together with your firewall settings. If these applications are not set up properly and are working against each other instead of in tandem they will slow your computer down considerably and the fault will not lie with your broadband connection but with your computer set up. If you find that you are constantly losing download speed particularly towards the end of your 30 day period then you must look at the following :
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