Shetland Broadband (SBB) believe that all users of the Internet should be responsible in their usage and how it affects other users. In the majority of cases problems occur with home users rather than business users. SBB ADSL products are, as for all other ISPs, "contended" services in order to make them affordable. Although your connection is permanently on, contention means that the available bandwidth is shared by all customers active at a particular point in time. This has no effect on the average customer. SBB ensure that their broadband service always operates below the maximum contention rates although congestion at a BT exchange, for ADSL, which is out of SBB's control, may result in slower speeds until BT upgrade their exchange.

We rely on our customers being fair in the way they use the Internet. Where we believe that a customers' usage is excessive we will contact the customer to discuss how they can modify their usage to the benefit of all of our users. All Broadband services from SBB are sold based on fair usage. You can use your broadband connection as much as you like, all we ask is you are fair in your usage, broadband is a service this is contended with other users (bandwidth is not dedicated to your connection alone instead it is shared with other users) and if one person is using up to their maximum bandwidth constantly then under the definition of the product it means that other people will always have reduced bandwidth. Therefore we ask you are fair in your bandwidth usage.

This "fair usage policy" is here to give us an option that if your usage is excessive over a period of time to the point it is impacting on other users then we reserve the right to ask you to reduce your broadband usage. If you need a 1:1 service and exclusive access to your bandwidth then you need a leased line, all the time you are using a contended service then you need to play fair with other users. Generally, we would view data transfer exceeding the figure specified in the product fair usage description to be excessive and reserve the right to discuss this usage with the user concerned. This does not mean your connection will be disconnected or impacted if you exceed this limit but, please have consideration for other broadband users with SBB in your use of bandwidth.

However, we do the reserve the right to restrict usage that is excessive. If your usage exceeds the Fair Usage Policy by an excessive amount, not just a few GB over but reasonably over, then we will contact you by email and request that you reduce your usage. SBB will not impose a usage cap on your connection, however, if your usage continues to remain high over the weeks following the first email we have sent to you, then we reserve the right to apply throttling or other restrictions on your account. At this point a better solution may be to change product which is better suited to your usage requirements.