BT have announced that they will drop the fair use policy on their unlimited broadband deals.
Customers with BT's Option 3 broadband and unlimited Infinity broadband will notice the difference from April.
Currently, BT has a fair use amount of 300GB a month, an allowance which the provider estimates only 0.5% of its customers overstep.
In the past, BT have said that fair use shouldn't affect more than the top 5% of broadband users.
"As BT continues to invest in the network and network bandwidth we can now remove these restrictions and ensure the experience of the wider customer base," said Mayuresh Thavapalan, general manager of consumer broadband at BT Retail.
"On completion there will be no individual user controls targeted at atypical users on our BT Total Broadband and BT Infinity products."
Still traffic management
Although BT's decision is likely to please many heavy downloaders it still doesn't commit BT to ending traffic management on any of their deals.
Restricting the bandwidth available to so-called broadband hogs - for example, limiting the amount of bandwidth available for P2P users - will continue. In which case it's fair to wonder whether users will actually see any appreciable difference.
If BT's intention was to reassure its customers that unlimited really means unlimited this might not cut it.
When is unlimited not unlimited?
Unlimited isn't really unlimited most of the time.
For example, O2's two 'download-as-much-as-you-like' deals O2 All Rounder and O2 The Works have monthly limits of 100GB and 250GB a month respectively.
That's still far more than most broadband users will ever need. Still, the perception that broadband providers are using weasel words continues to hurt a market already bruised by 'up to' speeds and dubious promotions.
Only a few broadband deals - Virgin Media XXL and Sky unlimited - are truly unlimited (and even Virgin's 50Mb XXL service restricts uploads).
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