network management policy

June 2018

Coleman County Telephone, Inc.

Broadband Internet Service

Network Management Policy

(Transparency Disclosures)

The following are the Terms of Service and Network Management Practices for Coleman County Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (CCTC). The bandwidth you purchase (your service package or nominal bandwidth) is the maximum bandwidth available to you. CCTC will make its best effort to transmit your data in a timely fashion. However, CCTC does not guarantee you that you will be able to use your entire nominal bandwidth at any given time. This is referred to as “best effort” service. CCTC strives to make your total nominal bandwidth available for you to use within our network. CCTC prices for its service offerings and access speeds are set forth by the company elsewhere on our website – https://www.cctelco.org.

CCTC cannot control bandwidth availability, congestion, or service quality on those parts of the Internet beyond our network. When other customers use our network, you may not be able to use your maximum nominal bandwidth because all customers share total bandwidth capacity at some points on our network and on the Internet. If the bandwidth demand of all customers at a particular network location exceeds the bandwidth capacity provided, you may not be able to use your entire nominal bandwidth. All services other than Committed Bandwidth services are “shared services” used by many customers.

Service is provided equally to all customers, and every customer’s data has an equal chance to be served. Service is provided equally to all customers, Internet services, protocols, and sources or destinations on the Internet such as websites, email servers, etc.

Affiliated Prioritization /Paid Prioritization. CCTC does not practice directly or indirectly any prioritization of traffic that favors some traffic over other traffic, whether it is to an affiliated company or to any other customer in exchange for consideration, money, or otherwise.

Due to limited bandwidth capacity on an upstream basis (customer to Internet), service is provided equally to all customers, protocols, and sources or destinations on the Internet such as websites, e-mail servers, etc. Service is not prioritized by customer or source or destination on the Internet. No services, protocols, or legal sources and destinations on the Internet are blocked other than for reasonable network management. Any effects on service may only be noticeable in times of significant congestion.

Throttling. CCTC does not, other than for reasonable network management, throttle, degrade or impair access to lawful internet traffic on the basis of content, application, service, user, or use of a non-harmful device.

Blocking. CCTC may block any service, protocol, source, or destination that CCTC determines to be illegal or a threat to life, property, or national security, or if ordered to block or otherwise modify your data by law enforcement agencies.

Congestion Management. At this time, CCTC does not implement network management techniques when congestion occurs, however, in times of congestion on CCTC’s network, CCTC may, at its sole discretion, implement reasonable network management techniques to protect the services of all of CCTC’s customers so that each customer has adequate service quality. CCTC will not implement network management if degradation of service is caused by congestion on portions of the Internet outside of the CCTC’s network.

Devices & Software. There are no restrictions on types of devices you may connect to CCTC’s network other than that they must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for use in the US telecommunications network. You may not connect any equipment to CCTC’s network that is not approved by the FCC. Most commercially available equipment such as modems, routers, and PCs are approved. The equipment approved by the FCC should have a label stating that it is approved and for what approved purpose the equipment can be used. Further, this information likely can be found in the user’s manual or printed instructions that are provided with the equipment or possibly on the manufacturer’s website. You should read this label whenever you buy any equipment you wish to connect to CCTC’s network. If you have questions about any particular equipment, please call us at 325-348-3124.

Coleman County Telephone Cooperative (CCTC) Internet access service is designed to function with accepted industry standard interface software such as provided by Microsoft, Apple, and others. If you use a type of software not widely used in the worldwide Internet, you may experience some problems with compatibility between your software and CCTC Internet access service. If you have any questions, please call us at 325-348-3124, and we will try to help you resolve this problem. It is the customer’s responsibility to assure that their software and operating interfaces conform to industry-accepted specifications.

Network Security. CCTC uses the latest industry-best-practices to maintain integrity and security of its network. This may include security protections that interfere with some types of customer traffic. If you believe your services are being disrupted by our security systems, please contact us at 325-348-3124. CCTC provides a level of protection for your computers from spam, viruses, and other malicious or unwanted items. While CCTC strives to provide the best protection possible for your computer, we make no guarantees that we can prevent all malicious or unwanted items from accessing your computer. It is the customer’s responsibility to protect their computers and other devices from unwanted or harmful items. It is very strongly recommended that you provide your own virus and malware protection, spam filtering, and firewall software.

There are additional considerations regarding Internet security related to CCTC’s Internet access service. Please review the Terms and Conditions portion of your service agreement.

Use of CCTC’S Services for Real-Time Applications. The Best Effort services above may be suitable for real-time applications if the customer has purchased adequate bandwidth for that service. Disruption during times of congestion, if any, will be minimized if you purchase adequate bandwidth for the services you wish to use. However, since there are occasionally conditions of extreme congestion at various points in the Internet, including CCTC’s network. CCTC does not guarantee that your service will never be degraded.

Note that bandwidth requirements will differ by real-time application. For example, video such as that offered by various services such as YouTube may require somewhat less total bandwidth than entertainment quality streaming video. Bandwidth requirements may also differ among providers.

Privacy of Customer Information. CCTC inspects packets of data you send or receive over our network to allow us to route and, where applicable, prioritize data. We inspect only the packet headers, which tell us where to send your data and the type of data.

CCTC does not examine the content of your data, i.e.: the data which you send or receive, such as the from and to e-mail addresses of your e-mail, which web sites you visit, the sources of your video, or the contents of files you send or receive.

CCTC does not sell or reveal your data to any third parties.

CCTC may provide any of your data, both on an active, real time basis and stored data such as your billing records, to law enforcement under appropriate legal orders if law enforcement requests your information in matters dealing with illegal acts or a threat to life, property, or national security.

Contact Us

If you have any complaints, questions or comments regarding our network management policies or practices, please contact us at 325-348-3124 or info@web-access.net.