DPI/QoS Deployments (24): O2 [UK] New Application and Time of Day Based Tiered Service Policies

  

O2 (a member of the Telefonica Group) has changed its traffic management policies, creating a differentiation between its 4 home broadband service plans - beyond just download/upload speeds and monthly usage limits.

The new traffic management policies consider the time of day (the weekday afternoon and evening hours are considered as peak time) and the application type (video streaming and P2P are subject to QoS policies). While such limitations are common now with mobile broadband services, we see that O2 finds this relevant to its fixed service.

See "What are the technical details of your traffic management?" - here.

For the "Access package" O2 will "During the busiest times we shape P2P traffic to a maximum throughput of 50kbps. Additionally, to give priority to traffic that most customers just can't wait for we have applied a Quality of Service (QoS) queuing system to prioritise traffic. That means streaming traffic gets ahead of browsing which in turn gets ahead of P2P. This will be applied during peak times from 11am-1am"

[Related post "Sandvine - Who is the Global DSL/Mobile Customer with 20 Properties? " - here]


For the "The Basics", "All Rounder" and "The Works" service plans, the limitations are as follows (note that the applications are generic, and do not refer to any specific content provider):

The monthly costs:

Note that the "unlimited" usage for the upper plans, is subject to "fair usage policy" which says that among other things subscribers must not "making excessive use of, or placing unusual burdens on, the network, for example by sending or receiving large volumes of email or excessively large email attachments" and if they do that, O2 may "terminate or suspend your Services, with or without notice as we consider appropriate" (here)