Andre Yoskowitz
9 Aug 2008 11:32
Earlier this month, Frontier Online, a small US ISP that serves 24 states added new language to their terms of service agreement that appears to cap almost half of its users at a minuscule 5GB of data a month, including downloading and uploading.
"Customers must comply with all Frontier network, bandwidth, data storage and usage limitations," reads the new TOS. "Frontier may suspend, terminate or apply additional charges to the Service if such usage exceeds a reasonable amount of usage. A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period."
However, after receiving tons of complaints, the ISP has now said its TOS means absolutely nothing and the company has created a new FAQ page to explain the 5GB rule.
Straight from the FAQ:
Question: If I hit 5GB will my service be interrupted?
Answer: No. Your service will not be interrupted at 5GB. You will continue to use our High Speed Internet service without disruption.
Digging deeper, TheRegister spoke to a company spokesperson. "In the past, we had a general statement [in the terms of service] that anyone using an excessive amount of bandwidth could be terminated. Now, we're saying exactly what we think is excessive," the spokeswoman added. "But at this point, we're not monitoring bandwidth. And we're not kicking people off if they use more than 5GB a month."
After the interview, one thing was clear, a bandwidth cap is coming, and possibly a tiered pricing system as well.
"In 2009, we will introduce software that allows us notify the customer of their current usage...and we'll look at different pricing models that address consumption."