Today, I was looking at the services offered by a number of Iranian ISPs, and looking at the “Unlimited services” of one of them, namely, a company called “Shatel”, I saw something very interesting, called “Fair use policy” (No, this has nothing to do with copyright rules.)
Before we begin, Unlimited services are supposed to mean that an ISP will not cap the monthly bandwidth, a blessing for someone who downloads a lot of stuff like me.
Sometimes companies do their best to avoid offering an unlimited services, specially if they fear they cannot sustain the strain of too many people of my kind downloading at the same time, and set caps, sometimes as high as 45GB, but they still limit it.
Now, back to the subject, the fine folks over at Shatel have added a “Fair use policy” for the unlimited services that leaves an empty feeling behind, I think nothing reflects it better than an exact translation :
Fair Use Policy
Dear user,
If you are a user of the unlimited services offered by Shatel, this law will apply to your service.
Why Fair Use Policy ?
The purpose of this rule, is your assurance of receiving a high speed and reliable at all hours in the day [tr : aka. We don't have as much bandwidth as we sell to you]. You certainly know that internet services are offered in a shared manner between the users, but Shatel, does not follow the procedures and the custom in advanced countries [tr : Dunno what this means though ;>], and to increase the customer satisfaction, has decreased the sharing ratio to a very low amount [tr : I suppose, that is supposed to mean that their actual bandwidth compared to the amount of bandwidth that they are selling is supposedly better than ISP's in "Advanced" countries].
In such a situation, if some users download large sized files or try peer-to-peer software, the bandwidth that the rest of you are using will be decreased [tr : aka. We sacrifice the users who use up as much an "unlimited" service would allow them to, to cut costs on bandwidth equipment and services, all for the sake of the "greater good"] in the maximum traffic hours, this can lead to reduction in the service speed [tr : See, we are doing this for your sake]
Will this law affect me ?
If you do not download large sized files or do not use peer to peer software, this rule will never affect you, but if you use the said software, please change their usage time to weekends or hours other than the maximum usage hours [8AM to 5PM] to use the service.
What will happen if my usage is high ?
If your usage is high at some of the times, it doesn’t pose a problem from Shatel’s opinion, unless the usage pattern is high and is repeated.
If your usage is consistently high, our sales experts will contact you and suggest you to use the dedicated service [tr : A term used at least in Iran, meaning that they will warranty to give you the maximum bandwidth, though since this service is used by companies - for being far far more expensive than the already highly expensive internet services in Iran - ,some sleazy ISP's will cripple this "warrantied" service after work hours like 5PM], if the customer does not agree to use the dedicated service and the high usage persists, this might cause Shatel to cut the service the support the rights of some other thousand users [tr : Aren't you over exaggurating a bit ? :>] to suspend or cut your service [tr : For the greater good!].
We greatly thank you for your cooperation [tr : "OBEY"].
As I remember, Comcast and other ISP’s went under fire for blocking or crippling peer to peer services, but none of them have been as arrogant as Shatel, which is the thing that made me go through all the trouble to translate this (I mean, to fail to offer as much as bandwidth that you sell is one thing, to actually fight the customers back is another – and far worse – thing :<)
Though truth be told, many Iranian ISP’s offer poor services, we should wait for the National telecom company to go public and for the ISP’s to fight further, so the service quality would improve, when will that happen, we will have to wait and see…
