Although Verizon says its FiOS Internet service “doesn’t cap usage in any way,” one customer who has been using 7TB monthly for several months in a row got a letter warning him that his broadband will be disconnected unless he reins in his “excessive usage.”
“If this excessive usage continues past May 31, 2015 on your FiOS Internet account, your service will be disconnected on June 15, 2015,” Verizon wrote to the subscriber.
The subscriber pays $315 a month for Verizon’s 500Mbps plan, according to DSLReports.
“If you break it down it accounts to a single ~24 hours of usage at the full 500Mbps, or 20Mbps for a continuous 30 days,” the user told DSLReports. “My usage is irregular and usually spikes up and down and sometimes the connection will sit idle for a day or two at a time. It makes me curious why 500Mbps is even offered if just using a whopping four percent of that connection is prohibited.”
The FiOS customer also said his prodigious Internet usage is “largely thanks to volunteer web crawling projects like Seti@Home,” which shouldn’t violate Verizon’s rules.
While Verizon’s terms of service for residential users say they may not “host any type of server” and may not “generate excessive amounts of e-mail or other Internet traffic,” it appears this user was targeted solely because of the amount of usage rather than the type. The terms of service do not define what counts as “excessive.”
Verizon’s letter to the subscriber does not pinpoint any specific violation other than “excessive usage,” but it recommends “that you check to see if your computer or other device has any peer-to-peer or file sharing software on it. You should also contact any others who have access to your Internet service and discuss the notification with them. If you have a wireless router, Verizon recommends using the strongest network encryption compatible with your network devices to prevent others from accessing your connection without your permission.”