A broadband service provider has been fined HK$130,000 for imposing service restrictions on heavy users who subscribed to its 'unlimited usage' packages.
This follows complaints to the telecommunications regulator in January and February from more than 100 CSL users who said their services had slowed down.
They said the company had unilaterally revised its fair-use policy, which was a violation of the supposedly unlimited mobile broadband packages they had bought. Some had been persuaded by CSL to upgrade to a more expensive package to get faster service.
After a five-month investigation, the Office of the Telecommunications Authority found that the practice had breached the Telecommunications Ordinance. The office said CSL had defended itself by saying its traffic statistics showed that more than half its bandwidth was used up by about 5 per cent of its customers.
The company said yesterday it had already modified its policy in February in response to customer complaints and now slowed down the speed only of those identified as 'extremely heavy users', without saying how they were identified.
'The fair usage policy has been adopted by the whole sector for many years,' a spokeswoman said. 'The policy is to ensure service quality to normal users is not undermined by heavy users who overload the network and slow down the broadband speed of others. So we still need to have some measures to protect customers' normal use.'
But the Consumer Council said service providers had an obligation to disclose in detail any limitations on their services.