This Fair Use Policy is implemented at a wholesale level, which means it applies to all NBN™ Satellite services nationwide including Westnet and any other retail service provider of NBN™ Satellite. We're proud to provide transparent information so you can make informed decisions about using your NBN™ Satellite service.
NBN Co has created a Fair Use Policy to help protect national service quality on the NBN™ Satellite network. You can search "Fair Use Policy" on nbnco.com.au to access the full document, but we'll be explaining here how the policy applies to NBN™ Satellite services sold by Westnet.
NBN Co's Fair Use Policy applies the following rules for data usage:
It's important to monitor your usage to avoid breaching the Fair Use Policy.
To reduce the risk of customers getting shaped as a consequence of breaching the Fair Use Policy, Westnet NBN™ Satellite plans are designed to give customers "safe" amounts of monthly data at a great-value price.
While other providers may offer plans with larger quotas, you should be wary of these because usage is measured over a rolling 4 week period rather than a calendar month. With the speeds offered over LTSS being much faster than older satellite technologies, if your usage is particularly high during the beginning or end of any monthly billing cycle, you may breach the Fair Usage Policy without realising it if you do not monitor your usage.
We've broken down the peak period data (7AM-1AM) in our two plans to show one example of how much time you could spend on certain online activities each week.
We've calculated this example based on the typical percentage of broadband data the average household uses on a range of common online activites - you may choose to spend more or less time on different acitivities, and your actual experience may differ depending on the amount of data required by any one activity such as varying download/upload size and image/video quality.
Online activity | Avg. % monthly data used for activity | Estimated data per hour for activity | Example of usage in a typical week | |||
30GB monthly peak data plan | 45GB monthly peak data plan | 60GB monthly peak data plan | ||||
Web browsing and emails | 10% | 0.09GB/hour | 8.3 hours/week | 12.5 hours/week | 16.66 hours/week | |
Standard High Definition (720p) video streaming (e.g. Netflix on 'Medium' quality setting) |
60% | 1GB/hour | 4.5 hours/week | 6.75 hours/week | 9 hours/week | |
Low Definition (480p) video streaming (e.g. YouTube on 480p quality) |
17% | 0.3GB/hour | 4.25 hours/week | 6.37 hours/week | 8.5 hours/week | |
Social media browsing and messaging (excludes video) | 7% | 0.12GB/hour | 4.37 hours/week | 6.56 hours/week | 8.75 hours/week | |
Video calls (e.g. Skype) | 4% | 0.5GB/hour | 36 minutes/week | 54 minutes/week | 72 minutes/week |
Data-intensive applications such as online gaming have not been included in this example as they are not recommended over an NBN™ Satellite connection due to the likelihood that the high data usage will lead to a breach of the Fair Use Policy.
The best way to monitor your usage is through MyAccount. If you're not sure how to do this, please see Checking your broadband usage in MyAccount.
There are also many software applications available to help you do monitor your usage (both free and paid) however these software applications typically do not measure the usage of every device connected to your NBN™ Satellite broadband, such as computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets and other WiFi devices. MyAccount is a more reliable option because it shows all of your usage in once place - you can even see your usage broken down to a daily view.
The iiNet Group, including Westnet, does not have any additional policies specifically for NBN™ Satellite. You may want to have a read of the Acceptable Use Policy in our Customer Relationship Agreement which applies to all customers, however this policy is more about keeping your service usage safe, legal and secure rather than anything to do with the amount of data you use.