Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

G1032 wrote: »

As good as down again. Mayo area. 0.5 Mbps. They won't answer the phone or reply to email

SkepticQuark wrote: »

Also gone slow again. I think we can safely say there's some bs happening at peak times with most of us?

Roryjohn1974 wrote: »

Cancel your direct debit payment , keep proof of all contact between you and them , they have failed to provide you with a service. You will win in long run .

Hi There,

Please find below a reminder of our Fair Usage Policy (FUP) and Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP).

These policies exist to ensure that all customers on our network receive a fair and consistent uninterrupted experience whilst accessing the internet.

If you have received a high usage warning, Your high level of usage does not reflect the increased usage from people working from home or normal usage including increased streaming and entertainment. To avoid breaching the Fair Usage Policy of 1TB of monthly data usage allowance, you must slow down your data usage. Breaching the 1TB monthly allowance will result in your service being restricted for the remainder of the month.

Any customer whose heavy, excessive usage is deemed to be affecting the overall user experience of other customers on the network will have their service temporarily and permanently restricted.


Fair Usage Policy
We expect all of our customers to enjoy the benefit and experience of our high-speed broadband service.

In fact and reflecting the quality of the service we provide, our average customer data usage at 340Gb per month is the second highest in the market.

However, we recognise that there are a limited number of customers that will attempt to disproportionately use the service which in turn may have an adverse effect on the majority of customers. Both policies allow us to control the few customers that consistently use excessive data which if remained unchecked, could have a detrimental effect on the experience enjoyed by the majority of customers with normal and acceptable data usage.

Customers with excessive, high usage are continuously monitored and where appropriate and as required, are asked to slow down their data usage. The FUP is set at 1TB, a huge amount of data, representing some 3 times the normal customer average monthly data usage today. Various restrictions are imposed on excess users such as restricted slower speeds and lower data caps to ensure that excess data usage by the few does not disproportionately effect the majority of our customers that enjoy a seamless normal high-speed service.


Unrestricted Data Usage - Off Peak Data Usage
To help all our customers, we have changed our Fair Usage Policy. Until further notice ALL data usage between 1am and 7am will NOT be counted as part of your monthly data usage.


Acceptable Usage Policy
This is the policy
The Network is designed to deliver a rich, superfast, low latency broadband experience to both home and small business Customers. It is both our intention and priority to ensure that all Customers on our network receive a fair and consistent uninterrupted experience whilst accessing the internet. We encourage the use of the service for all everyday activities such as gaming, streaming, catch-up, video chat, multi-screen and multi-device browsing and many other internet related activities.

We also recognise that there are a limited number of customers that will attempt to disproportionately use the service which in turn may have an adverse effect on the majority of Customers. To ensure that all Customers on our network receive a fair and consistent uninterrupted experience whilst accessing the internet, imagine reserves the right to apply restrictions on any Customer whose behaviour is deemed to be affecting the overall user experience of other Customers on the network. Such behaviour includes, but is not limited to, instances of running excessive concurrent internet sessions or regularly accessing excessive bandwidth intensive Peer-to-Peer applications, video streams, website hosting and large file downloads. Customers whom we deem to disproportionately use the service will be deprioritised which may reduce the download speed achievable at peak times.

This reduced priority does not limit the usage of the service or restrict the amount of data that can be consumed over time but is necessary to ensure fair and balanced access to network resources amongst all Customers and to ensure that excessive use of the service by certain Customers does not disproportionately impact the service available to others. If we notice continual, disproportionate or abnormal download or upload usage patterns we reserve the right to terminate the provision of your Service(s).


De-prioritising Heavy, Excessive Usage
To ensure that all customers on our network receive a fair and consistent uninterrupted experience whilst accessing the internet, imagine reserves the right to apply restrictions on any customer whose heavy, excessive usage is deemed to be affecting the overall user experience of other customers on the network.

Any user that consistently uses twice or above, the average customer usage will have their internet service de-prioritised. Whilst de-prioritising your service does not affect your normal daily usage and experience, an excessive, heavy usage outside of the network average will result in your data being de-prioritised to protect the experience of the majority of normal users on the network.

Consistent heavy usage where de-prioritising your service may occur is of particular relevance during peak times.

We fully understand that at this time with people working from home and schools closed that usage will increase. However, even in these exceptional times some customers continue to exceed the average and increase their usage significantly.

You enjoy the benefit and experience of the service because of the Fair Usage Policy and the Acceptable Usage Policy and we will continue to enforce these policies to deliver on our obligation and commitment to you and all of our customers. This is particularly important in the current circumstances.

Both our Fair Usage Policy and our Acceptable Usage Policy can be found here https://www.imagine.ie/acceptable-use-policy/


Things to check
Please check if something has changed in terms of your applications or services running in the background on your devices, which are causing high data usage, that you may not be aware of.

As a guide, here are some things that can seriously eat in to your data without you even knowing it is happening.

→ Auto Play - just keeps streaming when you're no longer watching. Seriously eats into your data allowance so switch off Auto Play options.

→ Backups - Google Drive, Dropbox, MS One Drive & Amazon etc can mean you're backing up massive data amounts - Backup new items/changes only.

→ Automatic Software Updates – usually set to automatic so they just keep updating. Set these to manual so you control when this happens.

→ Social Media Videos – Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc default in-stream videos to 'auto play' – Set them to 'play on click'.

→ Switch to SD/HD Content – by default, most streaming services play in 4K when they can – Switch off the 4K default – it's 4x the data if you leave it on.

→ CCTV – streaming continuously at high definition will seriously increase and eat up your data. Set to 'standard definition' or even better to 'motion detection'.

→ Update your Anti-Virus Software – We strongly advise updating your anti-virus and computer security programs regularly keeps you protected online and stops potential security breaches that can cause high amounts of background data.


If you have any questions about this message or have any further queries on how to reduce data usage, please check out our support section here: https://www.imagine.ie/support.

You can also view your current month's data usage on your Imagine Portal at: https://lteportal.imagine.ie/portal/login/login.

We are very proud of the service and benefit we are bringing to homes and businesses across rural Ireland and especially at this time when people need it most.

Please bear in mind that, like other essential service companies our call centre staff are working remotely, and our engineers across the country are working hard in exceptional circumstances. Please consider and follow the advice given before contacting us so we can quickly deal with your query.


Be Safe,
Network Monitoring Team

Ardent wrote: »

I think it's quite clear from the above that usage between 1 and 7 AM will not be penalised. So anyone looking to download/update games, for example, needs to be conscious of this.

Agree that they are not offering what was originally advertised - but I think they are in a bad bad situation and trying to make the best of it. The network is junk. Throttling certain heavy users is far more acceptable than widespread network degradation and many disgruntled customers.

I'm glad they're taking these measures to be honest. We are a family with moderate usage here and our evenings are badly impacted by greedy, inconsiderate individuals on our mast.

As said, the sooner FTTH arrives the better.

mercurystorm wrote: »

I had a call with one of the escalation managers on Thursday (apparently he deals with the ComReg complaints) and he confirmed the following

- There is a FUP of 1tb per month and usage during 1 am-7 am does not count towards this FUP
- There is an AUP which is calculated daily and usage between 1 am-7 am DOES count towards to your AUP - If you go over the AUP you will be deprioritized until midnight as its a rolling 24-hour window
- He would not confirm if the AUP is 20gb or not and says it differs on a per mast basis, he would not give an answer on what the AUP is for my mast

He also claims the AUP is fully explained during the sales call and you agree to it before taking a contract out with Imagine - I have disputed this and said the FUP of 1tb is fully explained but nothing about an AUP and the daily usage being monitored and throttled to a point where the internet becomes unusable after hours (I have been deprioritized in the last 9 of 10 days according to him)

He is going to pull my call recordings from when I took the contract and get back to me on Monday, he also told me it doesn't matter if I complain to ComReg as he deals with those and he will just provide them with the exact same information that he provided me, that there is an AUP and I am breaching it

I am not sure how 20gb per day can be classified as abusive in 2020 (or even 2018..) as that could be consumed in a single 4k movie from Netflix - Instead of monitoring bandwidth they should be monitoring applications like Peer-to-Peer etc

I agreed with the FUP as I had no other options for internet, but the AUP is definitely not something I agreed to

lanod2407 wrote: »

Yep. FUP explained and not a word about AUP. The alleged AUP will choke you down to less than 600GB per month so the FUP can never be reached by a customer.

I'm seriously considering leaving and challenging them re their inability to provide me with access to the FUP volumes, while imposing an AUP that was not mentioned when I signed up.

ARGINITE wrote: »

If they hadn't over subscribed the network to begin with then they wouldn't be in a "bad situation". The only greedy people here are Imagine not the people paying them for a service they are failing to provide.