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Acceptable Use Policy regarding traffic usage

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)

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".

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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.

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.

usage check for YOUR connection
http://www.qcislands.net/myusage/

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.

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.


Sales / Customer Service / Technical Support: (250) 559 7777


email: [Administration] [Billing] [Support]

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