Traffic management – what is it and who does it?
Some UK broadband providers use traffic management to restrict how much data your home broadband uses, but not everyone does it.
You may have seen traffic management referred to as ‘throttling’.
If thousands of people all try to access the internet at the same time, uploading large files or streaming video, it puts pressure on the service and will slow down everyone’s broadband speed.
Traffic management is a technique used by broadband providers to limit the speed of some accounts to make sure everyone can at least get online.
When does traffic management happen?
The most congested times of the day when most people are trying to get online on various devices in the home are when traffic management usually takes place. This is normally between 5pm and midnight on weekdays.
What happens when traffic management takes place?
If you suffer from slow broadband anyway, traffic management can take your crawling internet speeds to a standstill.
If your broadband connection is usually good, or you don’t have multiple internet-connected devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops) all using the same router, you may not notice any difference when traffic management is applied.
Where to find each provider’s traffic management policy
- TalkTalk broadband traffic management policy
- BT broadband traffic management policy
- DirectSave Telecom traffic management policy
- EE broadband traffic management policy
- Plusnet broadband traffic management policy
- Sky broadband traffic management policy
- Vodafone traffic management policy
- Virgin Media traffic management policy
- NOW Broadband traffic management policy
- SSE Broadband traffic management policy
- italk Broadband traffic management policy
- Hyperoptic Broadband traffic management policy
- Gigaclear Broadband traffic management policy
- BT Mobile Broadband traffic management policy
- EE Mobile Broadband traffic management policy
- O2 Mobile Broadband traffic management policy
- Three Mobile Broadband traffic management policy
- Vodafone Mobile Broadband traffic management policy
