Fair Use Policy

This Fair Use Policy (FUP) explains how we keep the Pine Media network fast and reliable for every customer. It applies alongside our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.

1. Purpose

The purpose of this Fair Use Policy is to ensure that all customers receive a consistent, high-quality broadband experience and that no individual usage disproportionately impacts the service. It also satisfies our transparency obligations under the Ofcom Open Internet Code and the EU Open Internet Regulation as retained in UK law.

2. General Acceptable Usage

  • Personal and business usage within normal patterns of the subscribed plan.
  • No unlawful, harmful, fraudulent, or abusive activity.
  • No deliberate network degradation, interference, or attempts to circumvent our network controls.
  • No re-sale or redistribution of the service to third parties unless your contract explicitly permits it.

3. What Counts as Excessive Usage

We do not impose a hard data cap on residential plans. Usage may be considered excessive if, over a sustained period:

  • Continuous traffic from your line consumes a disproportionate share of upstream or downstream capacity in a way that affects other customers in your local distribution area; or
  • Your line generates patterns consistent with operating a public-facing high-traffic service from a residential tier (e.g. a public CDN edge node, persistent P2P seedboxes, public-internet-facing SaaS endpoints).

If we identify a sustained excessive-usage pattern, we will contact you (by email and/or phone) to discuss the cause and, where appropriate, recommend a plan that better matches your needs (for example, a Business or Leased Line product). We will not impose restrictions without first making contact.

4. Prohibited Activities

  • Hosting public-facing, high-traffic commercial services on residential tiers (a Business or Leased Line plan is appropriate for these workloads).
  • Sending unsolicited bulk communications (spam) of any kind.
  • Attempting unauthorised access to systems, networks, or accounts.
  • Distribution of malware, phishing material, or content that infringes third-party rights.
  • Activity that breaches UK law or applicable regulator guidance.

5. Traffic Management Practices

We operate an open internet. In normal conditions we do not throttle, shape, or block traffic by application, protocol, or destination.

Reasonable traffic-management measures may apply only in the following cases:

  • Network security. We may block or rate-limit traffic that is part of an active denial-of-service attack, contains known malware signatures, or originates from compromised devices on our network.
  • Network integrity. We may temporarily restrict traffic from a single line that is causing congestion in a local distribution area, only for as long as required to preserve service for other customers, and only after we have attempted contact under section 3.
  • Legal or regulatory. We may block traffic where required to do so by law, court order, or regulator instruction.

Traffic-management measures are protocol-neutral and applied only for the minimum duration necessary. We do not throttle streaming, gaming, video calls, or any specific application or service.

6. Public IP Allocation

Standard Pine Media plans use Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT) for public IPv4 connectivity. CGNAT works for all standard outbound use (browsing, streaming, gaming, video calls, smart-home apps). Customers who require inbound public-IP connectivity (port forwarding, self-hosting, IP whitelisting, certain VPN setups) can add a Static IP add-on to their plan.

7. Appeals

If we contact you about excessive usage and you believe we are wrong, please reply to our notice or contact support@pinemedia.net. We will review the matter, share the data we relied on, and discuss it with you. If you remain unhappy, our Complaints & Escalation process applies, including escalation to CISAS where appropriate.

8. Changes to this Policy

We may revise this policy to reflect network growth, regulatory changes, or security considerations. Material changes will be communicated to customers in advance by email and reflected in the "Last reviewed" date below. The current version always lives at this URL.

Last reviewed: 26 April 2026