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Effective January 15th 2009 qcislands net ltd instituted a policy of high
speed account "deactivation" if an account exceeds twice the billable usage
to which they are subscribed. (see bottom for explanation
of "billable" usage) |
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If the subscriber has the usual residential package of 10Gb, this means
that at 20Gb, the account would be temporarily suspended. The system will,
however, send an email to the subscriber at 180% usage (which would be 18Gb
for a Residential 10Gb account), with a "warning" that "you are approaching
twice your subscribed limit and subject to de-activation". |
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Under normal circumstances, a notice received at 18Gb usage would provide
ample time for the subscriber to reply to it, saying "I am aware of my
usage, please do not suspend me", and we will set the system to NOT suspend
the account for this month. |
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Reasons for this policy: If the subscriber has doubled their usage from what they expect to be the "norm", then they have also almost doubled their monthly fee. If your usage was 'expected', then this procedure can be avoided by a simple email. If this usage was *not* expected, this email, and the subsequent de-activation may be very useful in both alerting the subscriber to a potential virus or a sharing program which has run wild, and also in that the subscriber may not desire being presented with a large overage bill at month's end. |
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We can site a few horror stories of accounts "run-wild" where the
subscriber incurs tens and even hundreds of dollars of excess fees in a
month and complains to us that we should have let them know. Some with
out-of-control viri, others with out-of-control teenagers, some that were
simply not aware of how their internet usage can impact the bottom line. |
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Other high-speed systems go about their usage control in much different
methods. Satellite internet for instance permits only 1Mb of downloads a
day. After that, they throttle back your connection to dial-up speeds.
Others let account usage go unfettered and then present huge excess fees at
month's end. Some Mobility accounts have a 500Mb limit, and after that they
charge $0.05/Mb -- that's $50 a Gb! (1000Mb in a Gb; 1000 * .05
= $50.00/Gb!) |
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We have opted for the more reasonable approach of not limiting usage
when any imposed limit is reached but rather of informing the subscriber so
that they can make a reasoned decision as to their monthly usage. |
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This policy is not designed to entice the subscriber to a bigger package,
altho if you routinely exceed the limits of the package to which you are
subscribed you may save money by upgrading your package on the next
billing cycle. |
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We encourage you to check your usage on-line with a simple click of a link
on our support web page,
which has a link to the usage checking page as the very first selection
on the page. |
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usage check for YOUR connection http://www.qcislands.net/myusage/ |
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Gigabyte ?? We've had the odd person who is confused about what exactly a "Gigabyte" is. "Gigabyte" (also refered to as 'Gb') is computer talk for Billions. So if you look at the numbers presented, they are hundreds, thousands, millions, and billions. The billions column is the Gigabyte column. |
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Billable traffic is that traffic generated while
downloading or uploading while on the 'net. Exemptions to the "billable"
portion of traffic is email to and from the qcislands.net mail server
(hotmail/yahoo/gmail/etc IS billable), and while viewing web pages
which are hosted on the qcislands net web server. Basically any traffic
which leaves from your connection or arrives to your connection from
the mainland is considered billable. |