What is Fair Use Policy?
You may have noticed that, though your Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offers “unlimited” downloads, usage is subject to a “fair usage policy” and wondered what was going on. Essentially, fair usage policies limit the usage of “heavy” or “excessive” users at peak times. These restrictions are imposed to ensure that the best quality of broadband is available to the maximum number of internet users.
But I don’t see how it is fair to consumers to get an internet speed of 256 kbps even though they are paying for a connection that was sold to them as having 2 mbps speed. In India, data-based plans are nothing new. But the hidden catch is not visible easily. You can pay a hefty sum to buy and unlimited data plan but still, once you cross the threshold of 25 GB data transfer, the connection speed will drops to a crawling 256 from the 2mbps promised and that is not even fit for checking emails and watching an occasional photo album on Facebook.
The Indian broadband customer is a victim of FUP, a term with two meanings – one, official; the other not. FUP is an abbreviation for fair usage policy, but irate consumers like to refer it to as the ‘f**k users policy’. FUP is a service condition that first appeared in India roughly two years ago as a footnote in the agreement between broadband users and ISPs. In recent months, it has become a hotly debated issue.
ISPs say FUP is a necessity because a very small number of customers use an excessive amount of the network bandwidth. Those who use more bandwith are often called data hogs, consuming as much as 200 GB in a month.
Users say it is hogwash to talk of FUP as an essential feature that safeguards the average consumer. The problem in India is that the limits are not fair. For example, a Tata Indicom plan that offers a 20 mbps speed, with a monthly FUP of 50 GB. With connections as fast as this, a user can easily finish his FUP limit in 10 hours. Why do these companies even bother to come out with such packages? Do they expect a user to get a 50 mbps connection and then use it just for checking emails?
Suppose your internet connection has a speed of 2 mbps and an FUP limit of 25 GB. If you spend one hour daily on YouTube, stream some news, listen to radio over the internet for two hours every day and purchase and download a game through Steam, your FUP limit will be easily crossed in 15 days.
The internet arrived in India in the late 1990s but users say the country is yet to get decent ISPs. It’s been years since TRAI set the minimum speed required to be sold as broadband at 256 kbps. Now it wants to update it to 2 mbps. But ISPs are opposing the move and have used their lobby to stall the reforms. The problem is that after reforms, no ISP in India will be able to sell plans with FUP that reduces speed to 256 kbps and label it as broadband. FUP pretty much nullifies the growth we have made over the last couple of years.
So if your broadband becomes excruciatingly slow in the middle of month, you know what might be plaguing it. The only solution at present is to go for a higher bandwidth plan or look for an ISP with no FUP!