New Virgin Media traffic management policy

Following the launch of Virgin Media’s new ‘Collections’ packages, the cable ISP has introduced a complex new traffic management policy which has independent upstream and downstream data limits.

Virgin published a new updated traffic management policy which revealed that file sharing traffic would be ‘moderated’ between 5PM and midnight on weekdays and midday to midnight on weekends. "Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic," Virgin said.

In essence Virgin has earmarked two five hour blocks in each 24 hours which are subject to individual traffic management. For example, a user on the L30 or XL30 package has a 30Mb/s download speed. If exceeding 7GBs of downloading between 10am to 3pm, their speed would be reduced by 50% to 15Mb/s. For upstream the figure is 3GB and the speed reduction is a 75% reduction.

For those on the top shelf 100Mbps packages, the daytime limit is 20GB and the early evening limit is 10GB before the speed cap kicks in, at which point the Virgin customer will be forced to endure the hardship of a mere 50Mb/s internet connection.