Excessive Use Policy (EUP)
CenturyLink is committed to providing an optimum Internet experience for every customer we service. To accomplish this, CenturyLink needs to ensure that customers are on the rate plan that meets their data download requirements. Of the more than 5.5 million CenturyLink High-speed Internet customers, less than 0.5 percent of High-Speed Internet subscribers are expected to exceed the download usage limits provided with their monthly plan. This small percentage of customers is on the extreme margin, using 30 to 1000 times the monthly volume of customers in the same speed tier.
It is for this reason that CenturyLink has made the decision to place download limits on residential plans. This policy only impacts residential customer plan download usage; upload usage is not impacted. It does not impact business class High-Speed Internet plans.
The CenturyLink download guidelines are effective as of February 2012.
CenturyLink will not charge a fee for excessive download usage. CenturyLink will weigh variables such as network health, congestion, availability of customer usage data, and the line speed purchased by the customer as factors when enforcing this policy. For those customers who are subjected to EUP enforcement, we will notify them up to three times using a mix of mediums including an online pop-up message, e-mail or phone call.
Customers will be given options to reduce their usage, subscribe to a higher speed residential plan, or migrate to an alternative business class high-speed Internet service. Our EUP is application neutral. It only considers the total usage (bytes transferred) over a defined period of time independent of protocols, applications, or the content that is generating the excessive usage.
CenturyLink's download guidelines are designed to support today's download usage patterns. Our updated plans include the following download usage limits:
- 1.5Mbps plans - 150 Gigabytes
- Plans greater than 1.5Mbps - 250 Gigabytes
View questions and answers (PDF) about the Excessive Use Policy (EUP).