Vianet FUP Quota Increased: End of the Sluggish Internet Nightmare?

With lockdown increasing indefinitely every other week, people are slowly starting to lose their minds. Fear of getting a hold of the virus is a definite cause but there’s one other passive cause that’s disrupting our sanity. Since the lockdown, internet speeds have drastically dropped and are not improving at all which has trapped most people in an endless cycle of boredom.

And while everybody’s been cursing ISP’s for not providing proper services, there’s a culprit here, hiding in the shadows that’s managed to skip all the blame. It’s FUP and could be one of the major reasons as to why your internet is so sluggish lately. With the exponential surge in bandwidth consumption after lockdown, ISP’s have had to throttle down the internet speed which is the origin of the sluggish internet problem.

Amidst this nightmare, Vianet; one of the leading ISP’s in Nepal has increased its Fair Usage quota on its unlimited plans by up to 60%. How does this make any difference and is this an end to the anguish of apathetic internet situation? Well, let’s find out.

The Schematics of FUP

In a nutshell, the FUP is basically a guideline that’s followed by practically every ISP in the world to monitor and keep bandwidth usage in check. On simplifying, FUP can be considered as a defense mechanism against unjust bandwidth consumption by capping the speed. ISP’s too have to buy “Bandwidth” which is exactly why there’s no “unlimited” bandwidth supply.

You see, there are some users that hog on to the bandwidth extensively for a long period of time. Their unrestricted leads up to heavy bandwidth consumption; which in turn affects other people’s connections as well. Since everybody’s paid their amount and to avoid congestion, it is necessary to throttle the hogger’s bandwidth.

If you’re a heavy user that’s constantly been engaged with the internet, this FUP could be a reason as to why your connection has been slowed down. Now if you’re a Vianet subscriber, things may slowly start to change for the good. Why’s that? Well as the title mentions it, Vianet’s extended that FUP quota; meaning that you’ll get better bandwidth for a slightly extended period of time.

Vianet’s Development on the FUP

To be clear, Vianet’s Fair Usage Policy is only applicable to home packages. FUP monitoring cycles are usually reset either daily or monthly. In the case of Vianet, they check for excessive usage by monitoring client’s data usage in a monthly cycle.

Data usage is calculated by adding upload and download speeds together from the start of every English month. If the data usage exceeds the threshold, the internet speed is throttled in three different levels. In the first stage, level 1, the internet speed is throttled by 60%. Followed by throttling to 30% and then 10% for levels 2 and 3 respectively.

To understand the new quota implementation, let us take an example. Suppose you have subscribed to the 25Mbps unlimited package. The first threshold limit for this package is after 800GB. If you exceed this amount, the speed will be throttled down to 15Mbps. Eventually, if you cross the 900GB range, the speed is capped to 8Mbps. Finally, crossing the 1000GB mark brings the speed down to 4Mbps.

And of course, something to note; each subscription has its implementation and all executions are permanent as well. A comprehensive list of the implementation is present in Vianet’s own website; which you can check out by visiting through this link.

Hungry for more? Give the “Ultraboost” Package a Go!

There’s an option that grants you an extreme 100Mbps bandwidth but as expected it comes with a separate price and a nametag. Dubbed the “Ultraboost” package, this bundle provides you a 25GB data of a massive 100Mbps bandwidth at a price of Rs 198 (Tax included).

Apparently, this package is supposed to solve all your sluggish internet problems. Well, I don’t know how effective it is. But if you do manage to give this a try, definitely let us know in the comments below.