Virgin Media, the largest cable broadband provider in the UK is implementing a new policy to restrict the service of the heaviest users who, according to its findings, constitute just 5 percent of total customers. These 5 percent customers are reported to download as much as 3 GB during the peak hours (between 4pm and midnight) leading to traffic jam the on the information superhighway. In order to make its service reliable for everyone during peak hours, Virgin Media moderates the speed of the customers who come in the top 5 percent of downloaders while the rest of Virgin Media broadband users will have their headline speeds unaltered.

Virgin Media provides three different broadband services for its customers. The heaviest users will have reduced download and upload speeds(4pm till midnight)as follows:

Broadband Size: M
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: M package download at least 350MB of traffic each.Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed - their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Broadband Size: L
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: L package download at least 750MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed - their download speed will be set to 2Mb, with their upload speed set to 192Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Broadband Size: XL
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: XL package download at least 3GB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed - their download speed will be set to 5Mb, with their upload speed set to 256Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

It should be noted that Virgin Media has doubled the headline speed of its XL broadband service from 10 Mb to 20 Mb from 1st May.