BT is pulling the plug on around 4,000 broadband hogs because of "excessive usage". The giant telco reckons these punters - who make up less than 0.2 per cent of the firm's 2.3m broadband users - are consistently hoovering up more 100 gig each a month.

Letters have already been sent to those fingered by BT with the telco insisting that the overwhelming majority of its users are unaffected by this move. It seems that these "exceptionally heavy users are in consistent breach of BT's fair usage policy and have failed to respond to requests to contact BT to discuss the matter.

As a result, BT has warned that these punters will have their broadband services suspended from 21 March and is bracing itself for a stack of calls from people who wake up to find that their broadband line is dead.

Asked to comment a spokesman for BT told us that suspending customers "has been going on for some time" and on an "ongoing basis for some months". ®

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• Pipex gets tough with bandwidth hogs (4 October 2005)
• Tiscali targets P2P bandwidth hogs (2 September 2005)
• PlusNet ditches fair usage policy (25 April 2005)
• Nildram moves to head-off broadband hogs (3 March 2005)
• Tiscali UK expells 500 broadband hogs (9 February 2005)
• PlusNet moves broadband hogs onto 'bad boy pipe' (30 November 2004)