Citizens uses various tools and techniques to manage its network, deliver service, and ensure compliance with our Acceptable Use Policy. These tools and techniques are dynamic, like the network and its usage, and can and do change frequently. For example, these network management activities may include identifying spam and preventing its delivery to customer e-mail accounts, detecting malicious Internet traffic and preventing the distribution of viruses or other harmful code or content and using other tools and techniques that Citizens may be required to implement in order to meet its goal of delivering the best possible broadband Internet experience to all of its customers.
Citizens provides its customers with full access to all legal and non harmful content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer including Peer to Peer (P2P) traffic and all Voice over IP (VoIP) services. However, we are committed to protecting customers from spam, phishing, and other unwanted or harmful online content and activities. Citizens uses industry standard tools and generally accepted best practices and policies to help it meet this customer commitment. In cases where these tools and policies identify certain online content as harmful and unwanted, such as spam or phishing Web sites, this content is usually prevented from reaching customers. In other cases, these tools and policies may permit customers to identify certain content that is not clearly harmful or unwanted, such as bulk e-mails or Web sites with questionable security ratings, and enable those customers to inspect the content further if they want to do so.
Internet Disclosure:
Citizens’ broadband Internet services are available at different upload and download speeds and price points depending on the customer desired usage of the broadband connection (e.g. email, web browsing, video and audio streaming, gaming, etc). While Citizens’ broadband network is engineered to achieve ‘up to’ speeds for each service level offered, we cannot guarantee individualized speeds to the customers’ premise. There are variables that may affect the customer experience that are out of Citizens’ control:
Performance of customer’s equipment, including age of device, processing capability, operating system, the number of applications running simultaneously, and the presence of adware and viruses, etc.
Type of connection between the customer’s computer and modem. Wireless connections may be slower than direct connections into a router or modem. Wireless connections may also be subject to greater fluctuations, interference, and congestion.
The distance packets travel (round trip time of packets) between a customer’s computer and its final destination over the Internet, including the number and quality of the networks of various operators in the transmission path. A customer’s connection may cross the network of multiple providers before reaching its destination, and the limitation of those networks will most likely affect the overall speed of that Internet connection.
Congestion or high usage levels. If a large number of visitors are accessing a site or particular destination at the same time, your connection may be affected if the site or destination does not have sufficient capacity to serve all of the visitors efficiently.
Access by the website or destination (or gating of speeds). In order to control traffic or performance, many websites limit the speeds visitors can download material from their site. Those limitations will carry through to a customer’s connection.
Customers are able to test the speeds that they are receiving on Citizens’ network at http://speedtest.citizens.coop/
Commercial Terms of Internet Service
Citizens has multiple levels of Internet service to meet residential and business needs. The price of each service level and delivery method is set forth at https://citizens.coop/.
Usage Tiers for Residential Gigabit Fiber Customers
To ensure Citizens a quality customer experience for Internet services to residential properties provided over fiber facilities, Citizens offers usage tiers. For more information and to monitor usage, please refer to your monthly Citizens bill or online through Citizens E-Care. Customers using bandwidth amounts exceeding their allowance will receive notifications as they reach the end of their data allowance each month. Notifications will be sent via email and/or cellular device on file at 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% of data usage plan. Customers who consistently meet or exceed their monthly data plan are strongly urged to consider upgrading to a higher tier of data consumption. Overages are billed at $5 per 50GB.