Egypt: TE-Data Fair Usage Policy

The Egyptian Internet service provider TE-Data, started applying what it calls a “Fair Usage Policy,” without prior warning. TE-Data and many other ISP's here already have Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and Volume Tracking systems implemented in order to offer limited and unlimited packages for their ADSL users, for different prices. But now TE-Data has decided to put boundaries on the Internet usage of the unlimited users, and even if you decide to pay more money to get an unlimited connection your Internet connection will be slowed down after you exceed a certain limit as stated in their FUP document:

Traffic volume for each ADSL speed is counted on monthly basis. When this traffic/ data reach a certain limit the speed automatically drops to 128 Kbps till end of the subscription month. The speed is upgraded once more at the beginning of the new month.

And for sure the Egyptian bloggers and Twitter users were not happy with such a decision.

@Jpierre wrote here:

Dear TEDATA. F**K YOU AND YOUR NEW FUP.

Also @Moodeey wrote here:

TeData have a new FUP for unlimited ADSL ! For God Sake it's called unlimited …

And @AmrSpace wrote here:

في صمت تام بدئت تي داتا في تطبيق سياسة الاستخدام العادل على الانترنت غير المحدود، بحيث تقوم بخفض السرعة بعد تحميل حجم معين من الجيجابايت
TE-Data started applying a Fair Usage Policy on their unlimited internet package with no prior warning. This will throttle the download speed of those who exceed a certain quota of Gigabytes.

In fact, it may not be TE-Data only, but other ISP's are believed to start doing the same thing. @Tafatefo who is subscribed to LINKdotNET wrote the following tweet:

كل الشركات .. مش تي اي داتا بس … وأنا أصلاً لينك .. عموماً الـ80 جيجا بتوع الـ5 ميجا دول يخلصوا عندي في أسبوع بالكتير
It's all the ISPs, not TE-Data only … I am a LINKdotNET subscriber … Anyway , I should exceed the 80 GB limit for the 5 Mbps subscribers in about one week.

11 comments

  • […] a previous post, Tarek Amr captured the initial reactions to TE-Data's fair usage policy and more adverse reactions are hitting the Egyptian […]

  • Queen

    What the Hell are these ppl talking about?!!!!!
    I am not a child,
    u tell me: “this is ur allownece”,
    and am happy and content?????….
    No Effing way,
    this is so disturbing,
    they can always catch those ppl who steal their services,
    but they dont want to get of their lazy *** and do something about it,
    LAME LAME LAME!!!!!!!!

  • Quahog

    Seriously…WTF? Where the hell did this come from?!!

  • or1n

    it’s not even fair .. i’ve a 512kbps line which have a limit of 25GB/month .. it would end up within 13~15 days … its really low .. aint even enough for doing my work

  • Ahmed, Mustafa

    This was my e-mail to my ISP Link
    Dear Sir,
    Regarding your alleged 50% discount, the ill intention of applying FUP policy with such low quota \25GB/month for 512Kbps line\ has nullified this offer, in fact it is regarded as 25% increase in price.
    http://www.linkdsl.com/LinkDSL_Code/Pages/DslAvailabilty/fup.aspx?lang=en-us
    If I may clarify:
    for the prior offer of a truly unlimited connection of 256/64 Kbps at 95 L.E. per month, a theoretical 80GB quota is alloted to my account \256*[(30*24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)]\;
    while using a 512/128 Kbps with 25GB quota and 128/32 Kbps after throttling, the theoretical allotted quota will be 25+33=58GB
    i.e. 512*[(x*24*60^2)/(8*1024^2])=25GB ,where x is the number of days to consume the quota while theoratically saturating the bandwidth
    x=5 days approximately
    and the rest of the month 128*[(25*24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)]=33GB
    Even though the speed is not equally distributed over the subscription period it is still considered an overall decrease in the quality of service from a single user point of view. your company could argue that operating at double speed for a limited period of all their customers’ subscriptions justifies the increase in the cost as it requires more server capacity at any given time, but in fact this double speed initiative was not demanded by any of your customers thus considered a violation of the contract from your end. Also, NTRA organisation only stated FUP quotas as guidelines and not mandatory so that your company can adjust them to compensate your increase in operation cost while not breaching end users contracts.
    “Consumer Protection Law” for the year 2002. This Law explicitly prohibits all these actions:

    مادة 9:
    يلتزم كل مقدم خدمة بإعادة مقابلها أو مقابل ما يجبر النقص فيها أو إعادة تقديمها إلى المستهلك، وذلك فى حالة وجود عيب أو نقص بها وفقاً لطبيعة الخدمة وشروط التعاقد عليها و العرف التجارى، ويحال أى خلاف حول الإخلال بالخدمة إلى الجهاز ليصدر قراراً ملزماً فى شأنه.
    Beside the absence of a detailed profile on your past operation costs and its recent increase incurred by the double speed initiative suggests shady pricing practice as there is no clear figure for your past profit margin and the recent one.

    On the other hand, your argument is that applying FUP will increase the overall service quality and ping time by limiting P2P and other heavy usage activities, as well as combating illegal line sharing practice. But in fact ,regardless of the legality of such action, low bandwidth customers such as single home users will be affected even though the probability of illegal line sharing is slimmer compared to higher bandwidth. In addition small businesses and higher bandwidth customers will be gravely affected by such policy as modern systems require regular updates and security patches, modern cloud computing, legal file sharing, video tranfser, VoIP, HD multimedia, online gaming, legal software purchases, social networking …etc. will all be hindered at the expense of one other.

    In conclusion, FUP policy is considered a good practise with some reservations, while ISP side net shaping and QoS is not. And I would like to thank you for not applying the latter. A good compromise would be raising the quota to the corresponding past subscription theoretical one thus avoiding legal issues regarding the change in the quality of service ,or changing the price of subscription to meet the new service but the latter action will require re-evaluating your increase in operation costs and clarity with your customers. As many of them wonder about the high prices of your services compared to other countries, but this actually depends on the communications infrastructure whether it is copper or fiber optics and the overseas bandwidth cost required to cover the demand on data from the main area of interest of a certain population.

    Finally, A suggestion to tackle illegal line sharing and overuse of the bandwidth is to offer truly unlimited subscriptions at a premium price to make profit and cover the cost of the stress induced by these actions on your servers while offering routers with QoS technology or servers to allot quotas and other premium services. therefore businesses or even now illegal private distributors will opt to purchase these offers.

    n persons network model for x Kbps speed:
    quota= x*[(30*24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)]= 0.3x GB , that is 0.3x/n GB per person

    smart FUP application:
    [x*(30*24*60^2)/2*(8*1024^2)] = x*z*[(24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)]+128*[((30-z)*24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)]

    x*(30*24*60^2)/2*(8*1024^2) ,quota from the past pricing plan before the double speed initiative in order not to breach the contract
    x*[(24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)] ,quota per day at regular speed before throttling
    z ,the number of day from the beginning of the subscription
    128*[(z*24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)] ,quota for the throttled account for the rest of the month

    so to calculate the day on which FUP is applied on a user theoratically taking up the full bandwidth from the beginning of the subscription
    0.15x = 0.01xz-1.3z+39.6
    z = (0.15x-39.6)/(0.01x-1.3)

    now to calculate the quota before FUP application
    quota=x*z*[(24*60^2)/(8*1024^2)]
    =(0.01x)*(0.15x-39.6)/(0.01x-1.3)

    that is 50 GB for a 512Kbps subscription.

    thus for example a home network of 2 computers on a truly unlimited 256 Kbps with no FUP for a gold plan with a price higher than 95 L.E. will have a monthly sub-quota of approximately 40 GB @128Kbps each. But since mostly there are no servers to allot quotas while most modern routers have QoS, the speed will most of the time appear to be @256Kbps while the whole 80 GB subscription quota will not be redistributed equally. A platinum plan can include a server and other added value services such as support, email…etc.

    while using a regular 512 Kbps subscription with FUP throttling to 128 Kbps for 95 L.E on the condition that the FUP is only applied if 50 GB quota for half the speed is exceeded. So this will deter illegal private distributors from using the regular subscription as this limit is reached easily in 10 days with illegal use.
    i.e. 512*[(z*24*60^2)/(8*1024^2])=50GB ,where z is the number of days to consume the quota while theoratically saturating the bandwidth
    z=10 days approximately

  • […] a previous post, Tarek Amr captured the initial reactions to TE-Data's fair usage policy (FUP) , followed by more adverse reactions hitting the Egyptian […]

  • […] Tarek Amr tamin'ny lahatsoratra teo aloha ny fihetsika voalohany nataon'ny tontolom-bolongana Ejipsiana teo am-pandrenesana politikan'ny fahaiza-mampiasa […]

  • […] example, the Egyptian government recently announced, through the ministry of communication, a “Fair Usage Policy (FUB)” to be implemented in Egypt, aiming to limit the bandwidth consumed by internet users and […]

  • […] طارق عمرو في مقال سابق ردود الأفعال الأولية تجاه سياسة تي إي داتا للاستخدام العادل، وتزيد هذه […]

  • AhMEd

    hey is this rule in Egypt Only

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