Fair and Acceptable Use Policy for Residential and Small Business Customers

1. Introduction

1.1. This document sets out our fair and acceptable use policy (the ‘policy’). By using any of our Services, you and anyone who connects to the Service using your Wessex Internet account agree to comply with the restrictions outlined in this document. This policy also sets out your responsibilities to help keep our network secure.

1.2. Terms in this policy which are capitalised have the same meanings as in your Contract.

2. No unlawful activities

2.1. You must not use our Services for anything unlawful or that might reasonably be disruptive to the Service or our network. Specifically, you must not use the Services for:

a) Sending, receiving, publishing, posting, distributing, disseminating, encouraging the receipt of, uploading, downloading, recording, reviewing, streaming or using any material (in any form) which is offensive, abusive, defamatory, indecent, obscene, unlawful, harassing or menacing or a breach of the copyright, trademark, intellectual property, confidence, privacy or any other rights of any person;

b) Making any unsolicited calls or sending or uploading unsolicited messages or communications that are obscene (including, but not limited to pornography), offensive, abusive, defamatory, threatening or illegal;

c) Activities that invade another’s privacy, cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to any person, including impersonating another person;

d) Activities that are in breach of any other third party’s rights, including downloading, installation or distribution of pirated software or other inappropriately licensed software, deletion of any author attributions, legal notices or proprietary designations or labels in any file that is uploaded, falsification of the origin or source of any software or other material;

e) Knowingly or negligently creating, transmitting, storing or uploading any electronic material (including, without limitation, files that contain viruses, corrupted files, or any other similar software or programmes) which is known or likely to cause, interrupt, damage, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software, hardware or telecommunications equipment owned by WI or any other internet user or organisation;

f) Launching any form of attack (including but not limited to denial of service (DoS) attacks, “mail bombing” attacks, or “flooding” attacks against a host or network) including our own), which could result in legitimate users being unable to access, or connect to the network;

g) Creating, transmitting, storing or publishing any virus, Trojan, corrupting programme or corrupted data;

h) Monitoring or recording the actions of any person entitled to be in your home or business premises without their knowledge or any person or thing outside of your home or premises including, without limitation, any public highway or roadway or another person’s home or business premises;

i) Collecting, streaming, distributing or accessing any hardware, software or material that you know, or reasonably should know, cannot be lawfully collected, streamed, distributed or accessed;

j) Reselling the Service;

k) Making excessive use of, or placing unusual burdens on, the network — for example by sending or receiving disproportionately large volumes of email or significant numbers of excessively large email attachments;

l) Circumventing the user authentication or security process of a host or network;

m) Anything that may disrupt or interfere with WI’s network or services or cause a host or the network to crash;

n) Granting access to your WI services to others not residing at the premises at which these internet services are provided;

o) For Residential Customers: any commercial purposes, save for occasional home-working for which internet access is required; and

p) For Small Business Customers: any data farming or activities of a similar nature which can reasonably be regarded as placing undue demands on communications networks. Please note: we have specific rights under clause 1.7 of the Contract to take action if we consider (acting reasonably) that your use of the Service for your business is extreme and excessive such that other customers are materially affected or our general network performance is materially degraded.

3. Use of the Service for marketing and advertising activities

3.1. Our Services should not be used for sending or uploading unsolicited emails, advertising or promotional materials, offering to sell any goods or services, or conducting or forwarding surveys, contests or chain letters except where done in accordance with Applicable Law.

4. Your responsibility as the Wessex Internet account holder

4.1. As the account holder:

a) You are responsible for all use of the Service by you or anyone else you permit. This extends to your children, members of your household or guests (for residential services) or your employees, office workers or guests (for business customers) or anyone accessing the network through your home or office either knowingly or otherwise.

b) You must ensure that anyone using your account to access WI’s internet services agrees with this policy and is aware of their obligations under it.

4.2. You make use of our Service at your own risk and are responsible for:

a) The content that you access or put online. (We recommend that parents and guardians of young children follow safe online practices.);

b) The equipment and devices which you use to access our Service;

c) Ensuring that any user ID and/or password selected by you for your Wessex Internet account remain confidential so that the network cannot be used by any unauthorised person. This includes not disclosing any user ID or password to any unauthorised third party, or use the same for any purpose connected with the improper use of the network including, where applicable, accessing or attempting to access other parts of the Services for which you do not have access rights;

d) Taking all reasonable steps necessary to prevent an unauthorised third-party obtaining access to your Wessex Internet account or our the network; and

e) Informing us as soon as you become aware of any violation or suspected violation of your Wessex Internet account or our network security.

5. Our rights as the service provider

5.1. In the event that you breach this policy, we have the right to:

a) Give you notice requesting that you cease or alter the relevant activity so it complies with the policy, or suspend your Service in accordance with the Contract.

b) Block any traffic passing through our network that we consider is potentially unlawful or does not comply with the terms of this policy and request that you cease to send or receive such traffic.

c) Make reasonable adjustments to your Service to address the harm associated with your non-compliance with this policy.

5.2. We will act fairly and reasonably in connection with any steps we take in connection with paragraph 5 of this policy.

6. Use of the Broadband Service

6.1. If you are a Small Business Customer, or we reasonably believe you are using the Broadband Service for purposes associated with a business or organisation, and we consider (acting reasonably) that that usage has become extreme and excessive so it places an unreasonable and disproportionate burden on our network and/or the services we provide to other customers, we reserve the right to take reasonable action. The action we can take in these situations might involve us contacting you to understand your usage, asking you to moderate or amend your usage, or, where appropriate, moving you to a more suitable Enterprise package subject to our Enterprise Terms and associated Charges. These rights are in addition to our suspension and termination rights set out in clause 12 of the standard terms.

7. Broadband data limits and exceeding those limits:

7.1. Some of our Broadband Services come with monthly data transfer limits (the combination of download and uploaded data across a calendar month used by your Service). Your data transfer limit resets at the beginning of each calendar month. Whether your Broadband Service has monthly data transfer limit or an unlimited data transfer allowance will be made clear to you when you buy the Service.

7.2. For any data use of your Broadband Service which exceeds your monthly data transfer limit (and you have not added an Additional Data Bundle):

a) Subject to point b) below, you will be charged £5 including VAT (or another sum about which we notify you from time to time) for each additional 10 GB of data used (whether you are a Residential and Small Business Customer or an Enterprise Customer) (‘Excess Data Charge’).

b) You can contact our Customer Support and ask that any use of your Broadband Service is limited strictly to your monthly data transfer limit, so once you reach the limit, your Service will be suspended until the following month and you will incur no Excess Data Charges. We normally process such requests within two (2) Business Days.

c) Excess Data Charges are non-refundable (except in the case of our manifest error).

7.3. Where your Broadband Service has a monthly data transfer limit:

a) We will send you a notification to your registered email address when you have used 80% of your monthly data transfer limit (or, where relevant, a) the limit associated with an Additional Data Bundle or b) an increased transfer limit subject to an Excess Data Charge). A further notification will be sent to you once you have reached the 95% point of the relevant data transfer limit.

b) It is your responsibility to make sure that you receive and read these notification emails in a timely fashion and take any relevant action. For this reason, we recommend that you ensure you can access your email account from an internet connection other than the Broadband Service — such as via a smartphone with an associated data plan.

c) If you know you are going to exceed your monthly data transfer limit, you may add an extra data allowance (‘Additional Data Bundle’) to your Broadband Service as explained below.

Additional Data Bundles

7.4. You can purchase Additional Data Bundles:

a) through the customer portal; b) over the phone; or c) by email

7.5. Additional Data Bundles purchased through the customer portal (which can be done at any time) will be added to your Wessex account within 15 minutes. Additional Data Bundles added over the phone or by email can only be added during our Business Hours and may take up to two Business Days to be added to your account.

7.6. Any Additional Data Bundle you add is valid for the current billing period only and unused data will not rollover to subsequent billing periods. Once an Additional Data Bundle has been added to your account, it cannot be removed, refunded or exchanged (except in the case of our manifest error).

7.7. Additional Data Bundles are charged in arrears and will appear on the invoice for the next billing period.

7.8. If you frequently require more Additional Data Bundles, we recommend you contact Customer Support to have this added as a more permanent recurring option.

8. Out of bundle Call Limits

8.1. As noted in clause 7.10 of the Contract, our Telephone Service includes a monthly limit on out of bundle calls, which is automatically set at £60.

8.2. The out of bundle Call Limit will apply whenever you exceed your Telephone bundle by £80 in a month. Where this occurs, we will suspend your Telephone Service as a safety measure (although you will still be able to contact emergency services).

8.3. You can increase the limit of the monthly cap by contacting Customer Support either by phone or email.