Acceptable Use Policy

Version 1.2 · Company number SC408055 · Effective 25 May 2026 · Last reviewed 21 June 2026

1. About this policy and our purpose

Badenoch Broadband and Communications CIC ("Badenoch Broadband", "we", "us", "our") is a community interest company. We exist to provide reliable, affordable internet access to our community, and any surplus we make is reinvested into the network and the people it serves — not extracted as private profit.

Our network is built on shared wireless capacity. Unlike a wired connection that is yours alone, the radio link and backhaul serving your area are shared among your neighbours. That makes us a little different from a large commercial provider: looking after the network is a shared responsibility, and the way one person uses their connection can directly affect everyone else on the same mast.

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") explains how the service may and may not be used, so that the network stays fast, fair, lawful and resilient for the whole community. It is written to be plain and reasonable, in keeping with who we are.

2. Who and what this policy covers

This AUP applies to:

• everyone who uses a Badenoch Broadband connection, including the account holder and anyone they allow to use it (family, guests, lodgers, employees);
• all use of our network, equipment and services.

It forms part of your agreement with us and should be read alongside our Broadband Service Agreement — Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. If there is any conflict between this AUP and the Broadband Service Agreement, the Broadband Service Agreement takes precedence. If you let other people use your connection, you are responsible for making sure they follow this policy too.

3. Our commitments to you

In return for asking you to use the service responsibly, we commit to:

• Treat your traffic neutrally. We do not block, throttle or prioritise particular websites, applications or services for commercial advantage. Any traffic management we apply is for legitimate network reasons only (see Section 5), as permitted under the UK open-internet rules.
• Be transparent. We will tell you what we monitor (Section 9) and what management measures we use, and we will explain our reasoning if we ever apply them to your connection.
• Be proportionate and talk first. Because we're a community provider, our instinct is to contact you and find a workable solution before taking any restrictive action (Section 10). This does not apply where the Broadband Service Agreement gives us the right to act immediately — for example, unauthorised commercial or business use of a residential service, or activity that is clearly illegal or an immediate threat to the network (Section 10).

4. Fair and reasonable use

Because capacity is shared, we ask every customer to use the service in a way that is fair to others on the same part of the network.

• Unless your service option includes a monthly data allowance (which will be set out in your order confirmation and on our website), there is no hard data cap on normal use. Streaming, video calls, gaming, working from home, large downloads and everyday heavy use are all fine and expected. Where your service option does include a data allowance, the terms of that allowance are set out in the Broadband Service Agreement.
• What we ask you to avoid is sustained, prolonged saturation of the connection — usage that runs at or near maximum capacity for extended periods, day after day, in a way that crowds out your neighbours on the same radio sector. Typical examples include continuous 24/7 bulk transfers, operating high-traffic servers or relays, or seeding very large volumes of data around the clock.
• We may identify a connection as placing disproportionate, sustained load on a shared sector where it maintains near-line-rate throughput for more than 6 continuous hours. These figures exist to protect the many, not to penalise normal use.

If your needs genuinely exceed what a shared residential service can fairly provide — for example you run a data-intensive service from home — that's something we can usually accommodate on a dedicated or business-grade plan. Please talk to us; we would rather find you the right product than restrict you.

This fair-use guidance is about bandwidth, not business status. Running a business from home is a separate matter: our residential service is for personal, non-commercial use only, and any business or commercial use requires our prior written agreement under the Broadband Service Agreement — regardless of how much data it uses. If you want to run a business from home, please talk to us about a business-grade plan before you start, rather than after we identify it.

5. Network and traffic management

To keep the network fair and stable, we may apply reasonable network management measures. These are used only for legitimate technical reasons — managing congestion, preserving capacity and security, and ensuring fair access for all users — and never to disadvantage particular lawful services for commercial reasons.

Measures we may use include:

• monitoring overall traffic volumes and flows at the network level (see Section 9 on what this does and does not involve);
• prioritising time-sensitive traffic during congestion to protect everyone's call and video quality;
• rate-limiting (throttling) a connection that is placing sustained, disproportionate load on a shared sector, so that it cannot crowd out other users;
• temporarily restricting or suspending traffic that threatens the security or stability of the network.

Where we apply a measure specifically to your connection, we will normally tell you and explain why.

6. Your responsibilities — lawful and respectful use

You must use the service lawfully and considerately. In particular, you must not use the connection to:

• break any applicable UK law, or to store, send, access or share unlawful material;
• infringe copyright or other intellectual property rights (for example, unlawfully sharing films, music, games or software);
• send spam or bulk unsolicited messages;
• harass, threaten, defame, stalk or abuse others, or distribute material that is grossly offensive, menacing or indecent;
• access, store or distribute child sexual abuse material or any other illegal content (such material will be reported to the appropriate authorities without notice);
• impersonate others or misrepresent your identity to deceive.

7. Prohibited technical activities

To protect the network and other users, you must not:

• attempt to gain unauthorised access to any system, network, device or data ("hacking"), or probe or scan others' systems without authorisation;
• distribute malware, viruses, ransomware or similar harmful code;
• carry out, participate in, or contribute to denial-of-service (DoS/DDoS) attacks, traffic floods or amplification attacks;
• forge or spoof IP addresses, headers or other network identifiers;
• run open mail relays, open proxies, or open DNS resolvers that can be abused by third parties;
• interfere with, overload or attempt to circumvent our network management, security or monitoring systems;
• resell, rebrand or commercially redistribute the service, or extend it beyond the premises covered by your agreement, without our written agreement. (Sharing your own connection within your household or with neighbours informally is fine; running it as a service for others is not, unless we've agreed it.)

8. Servers, relays and high-impact services

We are a community ISP and we like that our members tinker, self-host and run their own services for personal, non-commercial use — a personal website, a game server, a home-automation hub, a self-hosted cloud, or a privacy or cryptocurrency node for their own use are all reasonable on a residential connection, provided they stay within fair use (Section 4) and do not create undue load or legal exposure for the shared network.

Self-hosting for personal use is different from running a business. Even a low-bandwidth commercial service — an online shop, a paid newsletter, a client-facing tool — requires our prior written agreement under the Broadband Service Agreement (clause 37), whether or not it trips the fair-use thresholds above.

However, some setups create disproportionate risk or load on a shared community network and are not permitted on a standard residential connection without our prior agreement:

• services or relays that cause our IP addresses or network to become the apparent origin of third parties' internet traffic — for example Tor exit relays, open proxies, or open VPN gateways for public use — because these generate abuse complaints, legal notices and IP-reputation problems that fall on the whole community;
• high-volume relays or nodes (including high-bandwidth Tor relays, large peer-to-peer seeders, or public file/streaming servers) that consume sustained shared capacity;
• any commercial or public-facing service that draws significant inbound traffic from the wider internet.

Using privacy tools such as a VPN or the Tor Browser for your own personal use is entirely fine. The distinction we draw is between using such tools for yourself (fine) and operating infrastructure that carries other people's traffic through our network (not fine on a residential plan). If you want to run something in this category, talk to us — we can often support it on a suitable plan.

9. Privacy and what we monitor

We respect your privacy and handle personal data in line with UK data-protection law and our Privacy Policy.

• For network management, security and fault-finding, we monitor traffic volumes, flows and connection metadata (for example how much data is moving, between which network addresses, and on which ports). This is the same information that lets us spot a congested sector or a connection that is overloading a mast.
• We do not inspect or read the content of your communications, and we do not do this kind of monitoring to police what you lawfully do online.
• We will only retain, disclose or act on this information as permitted or required by law, or as set out in our Privacy Policy — for example to investigate a breach of this policy, respond to a lawful request, or protect the network.

10. What happens if this policy is breached

We would always rather solve a problem through conversation than through enforcement, and for most issues — especially fair-use ones — our first step will be to get in touch and work it out with you.

Depending on how serious the issue is and whether it is ongoing, we may:

1. Contact you to explain the problem and agree a fix (for example self-limiting a heavy service, or moving to a more suitable plan);
2. Apply traffic management (such as rate-limiting) to the connection to protect other users while the matter is resolved;
3. Temporarily suspend the service where the network's stability, security or lawful operation is at risk;
4. Terminate the agreement for serious, repeated or unresolved breaches.

For activity that is clearly illegal, or that poses an immediate threat to the network or to others, we may act immediately and without prior notice, and may report the matter to the relevant authorities. We will always aim to act fairly and proportionately, in keeping with our role as a community organisation.

11. Reporting misuse

If you believe someone is misusing our network — or if you receive spam, abuse or attacks that appear to come from it — please contact us at abuse@badenochbroadband.com. We take reports seriously and will investigate.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example to reflect changes in the law, in technology, or in how our network operates. We will publish the current version at /aup and, where changes are significant, let customers know. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept the updated policy.

13. Governing law

This policy is governed by the law of Scotland, and any disputes will be subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the Scottish courts, consistent with the Broadband Service Agreement.

Appendix — Definitions

• Connection / service: the internet access service we provide to your premises, including any equipment we supply.
• Network: our wireless and backhaul infrastructure, including masts, radios, routers and the customer equipment (CPE) at your premises.
• Sector / radio sector: the shared wireless coverage area served by one of our radios, whose capacity is shared between the customers connected to it.
• CPE (customer equipment): the radio/router installed at your premises to connect you to the network. This may belong to us; you must not tamper with, reconfigure, reflash or relocate it without our agreement.
• Reasonable network management: measures applied for legitimate technical reasons (congestion, capacity, security, integrity) rather than commercial discrimination, as permitted under the UK open-internet rules.
• Tor exit relay / open proxy / open relay: services that forward third parties' traffic onto the open internet such that it appears to originate from our network.