General

The more you use the Internet, the more files you download so the higher your Internet usage becomes. Usage is calculated in Megabytes (MB) and Gigabytes (GB) – where 1GB equals 1,000MB. As an example a typical music track is 5MB, and a 2 hour DVD quality film is 1GB. Uploading to the Internet (e.g. sending photos and emails) also counts towards your allowance, but other broadband services such as fax and telephony do not count towards your allowance.

To give all customers optimum service, irrespective of network demand, we have a Fair Usage Policy covering monthly usage allowances and Network Management of specific applications.
ipNX supports NCC’s Consumer Code of Practice and is committed to providing the best information about what affects customers' speeds and managing our service to optimise the experience for all our customers. To find out more about NCC’s Code of Practice on Speed visit NCC’s website www.ncc.gov.ng

1. Which plan will best suit your Internet usage?
The plan you choose will depend on how much Internet data you are likely to use each month. For example, you should go for the Small Business plan or above if you want to enjoy surfing the net for many hours every day and watching few video clips online (e.g. Youtube.com), as well as downloading large emails and hundreds of music tracks a month.

 
2. What is ipNX’ s monthly usage allowance? How will I know if I exceed them?
Each ipNX iwireless broadband packages have different monthly usage allowance, so you can choose the package that best suits your needs.
 

IPNX Total Broadband package	New monthly usage allowance(from 26 May 2011)
Family Plan	5GB
Family Plus	8GB
Home Office	10GB
Professional	15GB
Small Business	25GB
Small Business Plus	40GB
*Unlimited Plan	Unlimited

* Subject to Network Management

If you exceed your monthly usage allowance your service will stop working; advisory emails will be sent to your primary email address if you reach 80 per cent of your usage allowance each month and further notification if you then exceed your allowance in a particular month. If you exceed your usage allowance for two months in a row, we'll advice you to upgrade to a higher and more suitable plan. You can upgrade to a package with a higher or unlimited usage allowance.
To monitor your usage, you can use a search engine to find and download an online-usage meter; search for 'internet usage meter'. You may wish to try several until you find one that meets your needs.
 

3. How does broadband usage work?
Everything sent or received over the internet consists of bits of data, whether it's a web page, an email, a music track or a video clip. The amount of data is measured in kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). 1MB = 1024KB and 1GB =1024MB.
 

File/activity type	Approximate size
Email	4KB
Digital photo	1MB
Music track	4MB
Movie*	225MB
30 minutes streaming of BBC iPlayer programme (at 500kbps)	108MB
High Definition Movie	4GB

The total amount of data you send and receive each month is your total monthly usage, and at the end of the month we compare this with the monthly usage allowance of your Option. So, for example, with Option 1, you could download around 2,500 music files each month within your monthly allowance.
*IPNX services such as iwireless telephony and fax are not affected by our Fair Usage Policy and don't count towards your usage allowance. So you can watch call as much you like make as many online calls as you wish, without having to worry about going over your allowance.

4. My usage is higher than I expected. What can I do?
Your usage level depends on what you and other users in your household do online. If your usage has increased a lot in a month, check how your household's surfing habits have changed and what extra things are being done online. Browsing web pages and sending emails are typically low usage, video streaming and downloading music are medium usage, whereas high-definition video streaming, downloading TV programmes and movies or using peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications can be very high usage.
If you are regularly going over your usage allowance, you can always upgrade to an option with a higher usage allowance or the unlimited option.

5. What is ipNX's Traffic Management Policy?
IPNX continuously monitors network performance and reduces the speed available to very heavy users (typically less than 1 per cent of all customers) during a given month to ensure that the service received by other customers is not impacted through extremely heavy usage by a minority of people.
We may need to vary the policy from time to time to ensure the best possible experience for all our customers. This site will always be kept up to date with the latest information.
 

6. What is ipNX's policy on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications?
P2P refers to certain applications that enable files and program sharing between groups of people logged on to a P2P network. Because they use uploads and downloads and are often left running 24/7, they consume significant bandwidth, even when being used by just a small number of customers. Because a lot of P2P traffic is not time-critical, e.g. downloading TV programs or movies for later viewing, we treat P2P traffic differently from time-critical traffic (such as surfing, streaming or internet telephony) and apply speed restrictions to all P2P traffic at peak times. We manage these restrictions daily depending on the demands on the network, but typically they will be in place 7am – 9pm on weekdays and 9am - midnight on the weekend.
 

7. What is ipNX's policy on video streaming?
We do not impose any restrictions that affect the viewing quality of services such as BBC iPlayer or Catch Up on Channel4.com or ITV.com, as these stream at up to 800Kbps. However, we do limit the speed of all video streaming to 400Kbps during peak times only, which is between 7am – 7pm every day.