Fiber Network Management Policy

The following East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative disclosures are in reference to the FCC Open Internet Rules.

Service Offerings

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative via the East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative brand directly offers broadband ISP services through Aureon (NETINS) and other wholesale Internet providers. Please visit the East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative website to check availability, speed options, pricing, and broadband label information.

Performance

Aureon and others are the internet upstream providers for East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative. Aureon offers a speed test site to any user or customer. It can be accessed here: https://aureon.speedtestcustom.com/. These tests are heavily dependent on a customer’s home network configuration, router, and computers, and therefore do not reflect the performance of the East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative network only.

Your Internet Service Speeds

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative provides residential and commercial customers with a variety of high speed Internet plans from which to choose, ranging from our initial tier (with download speeds up to 15 Mbps and upload speeds up to 15 Mbps) to our top tier (with download speeds up to 1 Gbps aka 1,000 Mbps and upload speeds to 1 Gbps aka 1,000 Mbps). East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative provisions its customers’ routers and engineers its network to ensure that its customers can enjoy the speeds to which they subscribe. However, East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative does not guarantee that a customer will actually achieve those speeds at all times. Without purchasing an expensive, dedicated Internet connection, no Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) can guarantee a particular speed at all times to a customer. East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative advertises its speeds as “up to” a specific level based on the tier of service to which a customer subscribes.

The “actual” speed that a customer will experience while using the Internet depends upon a variety of conditions, many of which are beyond the control of an ISP such as East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative. These conditions include:

1. Performance of a customer’s computer, including its age, processing capability, its operating system, the number of applications running simultaneously, and the presence of any adware and viruses.

2. Type of connection between a customer’s computer and router. For example, wireless Wi-Fi connections may be slower than a direct wired connection into a router. Wireless connections also may be subject to greater fluctuations, interference and congestion. East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative does not recommend wireless router connections for use with its higher speed tiers as many wireless connections do not perform at the speeds delivered by these tiers.

3.The distance packets travel (round trip time of packets) between a customer’s computer and its final destination on the Internet, including the number and quality of the networks of various operators in the transmission path can vary significantly. The Internet is a “network of networks.” 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 or high usage levels at the website or destination. 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.

5.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.

6.The performance of the router that you have installed. Router performance may degrade over time, and certain routers are not capable of handling higher speeds.

This is the reason that East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative, like all other ISPs, advertises speeds as “up to” a particular level, and does not guarantee them.

There are other speed tests that measure Internet performance. We have provided links to a couple of these sites below for your reference. Please note, however, that all speed tests have biases and flaws. Each of these tests measures limited aspects of an ISP’s speed and therefore must be seen as a guide rather than definitive measurements of performance.

http://www.speedtest.net

https://aureon.speedtestcustom.com/

Latency

Latency is another measurement of Internet performance. Latency is the time delay in transmitting or receiving packets on a network. Latency is primarily a function of the distance between two points of transmission, but also can be affected by the quality of the network or networks used in transmission. Latency is typically measured in milliseconds, and generally has no significant impact on typical everyday Internet usage. As latency varies based on any number of factors, most importantly the distance between a customer’s computer and the ultimate Internet destination (as well as the number and variety of networks your packets cross), it is not possible to provide customers with a single figure that will define latency as part of a user experience. However, the lower a latency number, the better performance you will have and less chance for Internet issues. Note that wireless connections typically have a much higher latency number.

Congestion Management

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative does not implement any congestion management techniques. East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative operates our network to accommodate the necessary traffic requirements. To that end, we have two separate and distinct connections on a self-healing fiber ring to the Internet cloud in an attempt to avoid congestion and service interruptions. In the event of congestion or service interruption, all traffic is classified as best effort.

Our congestion management approach will change over time, as we continue to study and enhance our practices and as new technologies emerge. In the meantime, we will continue to invest in our network in accordance with our normal course of business operations, which includes installing technology that will increase the speed and capacity of our services.

Content, Applications, Service and Device Providers

As a full service Internet Service Provider, East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative delivers a variety of Internet-based applications. These include:

• Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
• Email
• Web Hosting

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative does not discriminate any customer traffic. East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative utilizes the network management techniques that are equal and standard across all user applications. We do not modify our network to make our directly served applications perform better than applications a user would access over the general Internet. For example, East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative does not manipulate our network to perform better for customers accessing East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative email servers versus East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative customers accessing Google’s gmail.

The network management practices employed by East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative do not differ between our directly offered applications to those general applications offered over the Internet.

Security Measures

In the event of Denial of Service (DoS), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, spoofing or other malicious traffic, East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative will implement inbound and outbound filtering on specific hosts. These actions will be performed to ensure reliability and availability of the East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative Network. These actions will not be utilized for normal Internet applications and traffic.

NOTE: 3rd party providers may perform this action on behalf of East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative on equipment that is managed by these same 3rd parties.

Privacy Policy

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative has provided this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy. The following policy summary discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative. To view EBTC’s entire Privacy Policy please visit https://eastbuchanan.com/about-us/.

Information

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative is the sole owner of the information collected on its website.

Viewer Privacy

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative does not collect personal information such as names, e-mail addresses, postal addresses, or telephone numbers by simply viewing our website. Since we do not collect any personal information on this Web site, we do not share any personal information with any third parties, nor do we use any personal information for any purposes.

 Applications for services that are submitted via our website request personal information and as such, portions of your application will be used and shared with third parties to ensure that your service runs smoothly and is maintained in an efficient manner. Your personal information is never sold to a third party for marketing purposes.

IP Addresses

As noted above, we do not collect any personal information on this website. We do, however, collect and store information about your Internet connection when you visit our website to read or download information, such as reports, news, etc. We use this information to track website use, measure site traffic, and improve site navigation and information. We collect information that identifies:

The name of the domain you access the Internet with.

The type of web browsing software you use to view our site.

The date and time of your access.

The platform you are using (i.e. Windows, Macintosh or Unix).

This information is never sold, given or disclosed to third parties. This information is used internally to administer our website, provide better services to the public, and provide aggregate traffic statistics to East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative staff. No personal information is collected.

Hyperlinks

Additionally, this site contains links to other sites. East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites unless operated directly by East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative. We encourage you to note when you leave our website and read the privacy statements of each website that collects personally identifiable information.

Acceptance and Jurisdiction

By using this service, you agree that you have read, understand and will abide, and be bound, by the terms of this Website Privacy and Policies (“Terms”). If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not use the East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative website. These Terms shall be governed in all respects in accordance with the laws of the State of Iowa without regard to the conflict or choice of law rules thereof. Courts sitting in the State of Iowa, federal and state, shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising hereunder.

East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative reserves the right to change, modify or update this statement at any time without notice.

 EB Winet Network Management Policy

No Blocking

EB WiNet uses an underlying carrier who does not block customers from accessing lawful websites or applications, nor does it favor access to certain applications or websites over others. Customers may elect to block access to certain websites or applications through their device settings.

Full Speed

EB WiNet uses an underlying carrier who does not provide preferred access or speeds to any websites or applications through its mobile broadband internet access service, including for any internet traffic of affiliated companies.

Fair Handling of Traffic

EB WiNet’s underlying carrier does not accept payments from any company to deliver its traffic faster or sooner than other traffic on their consumer broadband service, nor does the underlying carrier deliver our affiliates’ internet traffic faster or sooner than third parties.  EB WiNet does not, nor does our underlying carrier, prioritize traffic in a way that harms competition or consumers.

 EB WiNet’s underlying carrier reserves the right to take all actions it deems appropriate to protect its network and EB WiNet customers from malicious Internet-based attacks and other cybersecurity risks, which may include blocking access to websites and applications deemed to provide an unacceptable level of risk.

 EB WiNet’s underlying carrier employs reasonable network management practices that are appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose. Legitimate network management purposes include reasonable security practices that protect confidentiality, integrity and practices that ensure availability of network services, limit traffic that is harmful to the network, and provide services and capabilities consistent with customer’s need for services.

Prioritization

EB WiNet’s underlying carrier prioritizes Voice over LTE traffic over other data traffic. Additionally, EB WiNet’s underlying carrier may prioritize data traffic of first responders and public safety personnel who receive prioritized service over Voice and LTE traffic. Also, some service plans are designed that allow its data traffic to be prioritized over data traffic on different service plans during times of congestion on the network. EB WiNet’s underlying carrier constantly monitors the network to ensure it operates efficiently and provides the best experience, which results in network operations always managing traffic prioritization, often with a negligible effect on the customer experience. However, during cell site congestion, data prioritization may be more noticeable with nonprioritized traffic receiving noticeably slower speeds than typical. Data speeds return to their typical speeds after the congestion in the area abates.

Congestion Management

EB WiNet’s underlying carrier manages their 4G LTE network resources by employing congestion management techniques that enhance the service experience for the largest number of customers but may result in a degradation of service for other customers. For example, if you are connected to a cell site that begins to experience increased customer demand, your data speeds may be slowed to provide a more consistent experience to the greatest number of customers possible. Whether your data speeds will be slowed depends on a myriad of factors, including but not limited to, the amount of data you are consuming at a given point in time, the purpose for which the data is being consumed (video vs e-mail for example) and the data plan you are on. As speeds are reduced, it can cause increased latency and cause downloads to take longer or videos to buffer. Congestion management technology automatically adjusts speeds to address the congestion, which can vary depending on the number of devices connected to the site and the type of data intensive applications being used. Congestion is often limited to a very short period (many times measured in a fraction of a second). Because the congestion at a cell site varies significantly, the performance impact for affected customers also varies significantly, but lasts only as long as the site is congested. Once the high demand on the cell site decreases, or if the customer connects to a different non-congested site, the speed will return to normal.

Video Optimization

EB WiNet’s underlying carrier limits the maximum speeds of video streams to deliver a good video quality (e.g. – 480p, 720p, 1080p or 2160p resolution) thus optimizing the viewing experiences of our customers over the underlying carrier’s 4G LTE networks. Video quality is plan-specific and defined in the plan’s terms and conditions. This practice applies to all video streaming and does not distinguish between the content of the video or the streaming service provider.

Speed Reduction

EB WiNet’s underlying carrier may reduce speeds for mobile broadband internet access service under the following circumstances:

• When the terms and conditions of the customer’s data plan provides that data usage will be provided at a reduced or capped speed. By way of example and not limitation, EB WiNet’s underlying carrier currently offers postpaid plans that include a certain amount of prioritized data that may be slowed during periods of congestion and slowed further after the amount of prioritized data is consumed.
• In the exercise of reasonable network management practices to address network congestion as described in Congestion Management.
• When the customer exceeds a certain amount of data while roaming as provided for under the terms and conditions of the customer’s plan, or as specified in the customer service agreement that governs the provisioning of mobile broadband internet access service by EB WiNet.

Heavy User Policy

To provide the best experience for most customers, and minimize capacity and degradation of data services, EB WiNet’s underlying carrier manages the data speeds of those customers with significant high-speed data usage on many of our Unlimited plans. Heavy Data Users (as defined by a customer’s rate plan) may have their data usage slowed. At the start of the next bill cycle, the customer’s usage status resets, and data speeds are no longer slowed.

Network Security

EB WiNet’s underlying carrier implements and manages security controls, requirements, and protection by following the Defense-in-Depth methodology while utilizing the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) CSF (Cyber Security Framework) Framework to protect both customer data and the operation of the wireless network. This methodology, built on a solid operational foundation and grounded in Zero Trust principles, is an approach to layer security in such a way that if any one layer is compromised the other layers provide reasonable protections. EB WiNet’s underlying carrier optimizes and aligns our security posture continuously with the changing threat landscape and business requirements.

 Network Performance

The performance characteristics of EB WiNet’s mobile broadband internet access service is 4G LTE. The underlying carrier periodically collects data from a third-party vendor to measure the download and upload speeds and latency of its service across its licensed footprint. The latest data can be seen in the table below:

The table shows the range of speeds and latency that customers can expect from EB WiNet service, based on the underlying carrier’s network performance. However, these values are not guaranteed, as they may vary depending on several factors, such as the customer’s location, network traffic, data usage, and plan type. Some plans have speed caps that limit the maximum speed that customers can receive, while others do not. Therefore, customers should check the terms and conditions of their plans before choosing the service that best suits their needs.