Re: "a given time period"
It's also worth remembering that all throttling is not equal. If someone is on a shiny FttP connection at 300 Mbps and gets throttled to 80 Mbps once they've downloaded a certain amount, that's probably not the end of the world since they're still getting the equivalent of a FttC service that's more than sufficient for the average household even if it's not quite as much as they'd like. On the other hand, if they're throttled to 56 kbps, that's low enough to make the modern internet essentially unusable; it may be technically called throttling, but it's equivalent to simply being cut off entirely.
In this case, as reported by the BBC at least, speeds were reduced to 200 kbps. It's not quite dialup, but it is slower than even 2G EDGE is capable of, and far less than is required to actually use the internet. If your electricity supplier decided you'd used too much power and restricted you to enough to power a single LED lightbulb, most people wouldn't consider that acceptable throttling since it's functionally no different from simply being cut off entirely. Similarly, many people are willing to accept bandwidth limits as long as those limits are reasonable and allow them to continue using the service in a reduced capacity. Cutting the service off in everything but name is not throttling, it's simply holding the customer to ransom.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
