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Network management disclosure

RCN is committed to providing our Internet services as an open platform for innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression. We do not block any lawful content, applications, services, or your use of non-harmful devices, or discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic except as reasonably necessary to manage our network effectively for the benefit of our customers as described below. The purpose of this disclosure is to make available information regarding our network management practices and the performance and commercial terms of our broadband Internet access services to enable you to make informed choices regarding the purchase and use of our services, in accordance with Part 8 of the Rules of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This summary disclosure is provided for your convenience and does not replace or alter the legal terms and conditions of service.

Resolving Complaints and Questions

If you have any questions or concerns about your Internet services, please contact us at 800-RING-RCN.

Service Option

Our current Internet services for each of our markets are described at https://www.astound.com.

Please note that these services are described as offering “up to” certain speeds. While we engineer our network to achieve the speeds for each of the service tiers we offer, we cannot guarantee that customers will always experience those speeds. Advertised speeds are average speeds, and may vary.

Performance Characteristics

Your service may vary based on a number of performance characteristics, including:

  1. Performance of your computer, including its age, processing capability, its operating system, the number of applications running simultaneously, and the presence of any adware or viruses.
  2. Type of connection between your computer and modem. For example, wireless connections may be slower than direct connections into a router or modem. Customers are responsible for determining whether particular wireless devices or other customer equipment are suitable for use with their Internet services.
  3. The distance packets travel (round trip time of packets) between your computer and its final destination on the Internet, including the number and quality of the networks of various operators in the transmission path. A customer’s connection may traverse the networks of multiple providers before reaching its destination, and the limitations of those networks will most likely affect the overall speed of that Internet connection.
  4. Congestion. If a large number of visitors are accessing a site or particular destination at the same time, your connection will be affected if the site or destination does not have sufficient capacity to serve all of the visitors efficiently. Congestion can also occur when our customers served by the same facilities simultaneously request high volumes of data, such as peak usage hours during the evening.
  5. Speed. Gating of speeds or access by the website or destination. In order to control traffic or performance, many websites limit the speeds at which a visitor can download from their site. Those limitations will carry through to a customer’s connection. Although speed and network performance are roughly uniform throughout RCN’s network, customer speed may vary depending on geographic location. All RCN services with the exception of dial-up are suitable for real-time applications.

    Customers may test service speeds using commercial speed tests available online, such as http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/about. However, speed tests have biases and flaws, and should be considered only as informational and not a reflection of actual performance. While we do not believe these third party tests reliably measure the speed of your service, if you are consistently testing substantially below your package speed, please contact us for assistance.

  6. The performance of the modem you have installed. Modem performance may degrade over time, and certain modems are not capable of handling higher speeds.
  7. Packet Loss. RCN engineers its network toward a goal of zero packet loss. Users should experience minimal, if any, packet loss at any given time, subject to network congestion. In the unlikely event that packet loss materially affects a customer’s service, RCN will treat complaints as a service impairment and will attempt to remedy the situation.
  8. Latency. Subject to the factors above, the typical performance of our Internet services will approximate or exceed the national wireline broadband Internet speed and latency levels reported by the FCC. The FCC has reported that customers of coaxial cable-based broadband Internet services experience an average latency of 28 milliseconds, and receive mean download speeds that are within 93% of maximum advertised speeds during non-peak hours and mean download speeds of 85.7% of maximum advertised speeds during peak hours of 7 pm to 11 pm. Additional information about this FCC report is available at

    http://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/measuringbroadbandreport/Measuring_U.S._-_Main_Report_Full.pdf.

    Your use of our telephone services does not materially affect your Internet performance. If we deliver other Internet Protocol based services or any specialized or managed services in the future that would likely affect your Internet services, we will provide additional information as appropriate.

Network Management Practices

We engage in network management practices in order to provide quality Internet access service including during periods of high demand, and to protect us and our customers from harmful content such as malware, spam, and viruses.

  1. Congestion Management. Our telephone service traffic is prioritized to ensure voice quality and phone functionality. At this time, we do not engage in any other congestion management that reduces the capacity available to particular services or customers.
  2. Application-Specific Behavior. Except as specifically described above, at this time we do not target specific types of traffic based on their technology or their provider, modify protocol fields in ways not prescribed by the protocol standard, inhibit or favor certain applications or classes of applications, or block or manage any specific protocols or protocol ports.
  3. Device Attachment Rules. Rules and restrictions governing the types of devices and approval procedures for devices connected to the RCN network are available at https://help.rcn.com/?articleid=2208&cid=6& c=12&cpc=dA6ARprg8f54Nu4SuR3rC2#tab:homeTab:crumb:7:artId:2208:src:article.
  4. Security. We attempt to block commonly known malware and malicious ports and protocols for the protection of our customers. Accordingly, RCN blocks inbound (to the customer) ports including, but not limited to, 80, 443, and 25 for dynamically addressed residential customers. In rare cases we may take other corrective action after providing written notice to a customer who has repeatedly been identified as a heavy user or who has violated the terms of service. We also defend our own network with extensive filtering to network devices and anti-DDos infrastructure.

Commercial Terms of Service and Privacy Policies

Your service is subject to our terms of service, privacy policy, and acceptable use policy, and other policies and disclaimers, all of which are posted at https://www.astound.com/policies-disclaimers/. These terms include certain penalties for early termination, described at https://www.astound.com/policies-disclaimers/terms-conditions/. Subject to the terms of service, at this time we do not impose any fees for incremental usage of our services. We do not store usage data, provide any information about customers’ usage to any third party, or engage in deep packet inspection or any other inspection of content or usage data for non-network purposes, except to the extent required by applicable law. We do retain anonymized, aggregated data about the quantity of usage in order to monitor the capacity of our network.

Other Fees. You may be subject to additional, one-time or recurring fees.

Additional information about RCN’s rates and services is available at https://www.astound.com.

Disclaimers

Not all services, speeds, packages, equipment, channels, tiers, pricing, streaming services, product offerings and product features are available in all areas. Offers valid only for new residential customers or previous customers with account in good standing who have not had our service within the last 60 days. All names, logos, images and service marks are property of their respective owners. Other restrictions may apply.