PART I: OVERVIEW

We provide satellite broadband services via the KA-Sat satellite. Since April 30, 2021, the KA-Sat satellite has been owned and maintained by Viasat Inc.

Eutelsat is not involved in communications with end users or subscribers. From a customer perspective, its sole role is to manage the satellite technology background and manage network traffic.

Tooway’s parent company, bigblu, is responsible for all ground services directly connected to customers (eg sales, billing, support, installation and logistics).

Like most domestic terrestrial broadband services, Eutelsat Tooway’s network (the “Network”) is a distributed and ad hoc network; subscribers within a given geographic area must share the available network capacity at all times.

Eutelsat aims to give all subscribers a “fair share” of this capacity while offering them a high quality online user experience.
If the network in the given geographical area is under load (e.g. during peak hours), the service may slow down for our subscribers who handle a given, exceptionally high data traffic. The reason for this is to ensure fair access to the network for all users.

If there is a network load, the threshold is 20 GB for the Bronze package, 60 GB for Silver customers, and 120 GB for the Gold subscription. The network is not expected to be overloaded until the next-generation satellite comes into operation (2021-2022), but it cannot be ruled out that there may occasionally be a busy period.

Through the customer portal , you can determine how the fair use policies currently affect the service.

Eutelsat uses network management procedures to prevent a given user from disproportionately using network resources. These procedures include some that are used only when the network is overloaded, and some that are used more widely.

In general, the level of network traffic does not have a significant impact on the user experience. Eutelsat designed its network with this goal in mind. However, in other cases, too much user demand at the same time can lead to overload (“network congestion”), during which the total bandwidth demand exceeds what is available on the network.

During these periods, Eutelsat’s congestion management procedures (see Part II for more details) are first applied to users who have already used more than 100% of the traffic according to their data consumption profile. The purpose of this is to manage the traffic in a way that reduces the impact on the user experience and prevents the subscriber from exceeding his “fair share” of the available capacity.

The measures are intended to ensure that the vast majority of users have a better overall service experience than without these practices.

II. PART: METHODS OF HANDLING NETWORK CONGESTION

A. Congestion Management Overview

With normal network traffic, Eutelsat is not forced to use congestion management procedures. At the same time, it can be said that the network capacity is ample, but not unlimited. This means that congestion is sometimes unavoidable at peak times, and congestion management procedures ensure that the load is properly managed and that the majority of the user network receives the best possible service.

Network congestion usually occurs in the connection between the subscriber endpoint and the earth station of the gateway on the satellite channel. To determine if the network is congested, Eutelsat continuously monitors traffic on each spot beam channel. If the current traffic load exceeds the available capacity of the spot beam channel, Eutelsat applies the congestion management algorithm described below.

B. Mitigating the impact of network congestion on user experience

Internet traffic is usually “fluctuating”, i.e. not constant or continuous, but characterized by sudden increases. Sometimes too much capacity demand from too many users of a given spot beam channel in the same period results in the total capacity demand momentarily exceeding the available capacity on the channel.

In such cases, congestion may occur on the network. Congestion occurs most often during peak network load times, which can be expected between approximately 17:00 and 00:00 local time (“peak time”).

Congestion may also occur during certain periods when the network can be used without restrictions (for example, “night unlimited period”).

Some types of applications are more sensitive to congestion and the resulting transmission delay, others less so. For example, a user waiting for content to appear may notice a delay when websites load. On the other hand, a user downloading large files (e.g. a software update) is less affected by the fact that the download takes longer during congestion, since he already expects that the download will take some time.

Customers should also be aware that bottlenecks and congestion often occur on the public Internet, and if they experience “slow performance” it is not necessarily caused by congestion on the Tooway network.

Eutelsat aims to operate the network in such a way that the impact of congestion on traffic is minimized. To this end, Eutelsat’s congestion management algorithm reduces the load caused by traffic while giving priority to services and applications with lower bandwidth, such as browsing and e-mail.

Network congestion tends to affect bandwidth-intensive applications such as video streaming and file downloads. This may result in reduced quality of video streams and/or buffering. In addition, files may take longer to download in case of congestion.

During more severe congestion, all applications may slow down and websites may take longer to load. The Eutelsat and Tooway services only act as an “intermediary medium”. Even though Eutelsat cannot be linked in any way to the information transmitted over the network, at the specific request of the authority, Eutelsat can block access to certain URLs.

Eutelsat does not intentionally block any specific type of traffic (unless specifically defined in the characteristics of a particular service profile), but may block certain TCP/UDP ports and/or protocols that it reasonably believes pose a threat to network security.

C. Extreme users

An “extreme user” is a user (or small group of users) who consumes a disproportionate amount of network resources. Eutelsat monitors the overall performance of the Network and the use of individual resources to determine whether a user is considered an extreme user and thus hinders or impairs the operation of the Network and/or its use by other users.

Eutelsat reserves the right to immediately limit, suspend or terminate the service account of extreme users without further notice.

III. SECTION: WEB BROWSING AND EMAIL

During the service restriction period, the user must comply with all of the following guidelines when browsing and emailing (otherwise the service will not be available):

• Virtual Private Network (VPN) and remote access software should be turned off.
• A web browser application must be used. Only static content on websites (not video or music) is considered web browsing and/or email. The content viewed in other applications is not always considered a website or e-mail (e.g. non-web browser applications for Android, iPhone or iPad devices).
• URLs displayed in the browser must start with the prefix http:// or https://. This means that ftp:// and other sites that launch external applications are not acceptable web traffic.
• The size of attachments sent by e-mail must not exceed 10 MB.