‘FUP’ stands for ‘Fair Usage Policy,’ and it refers to a policy implemented by mobile or telecom operators, Internet, and broadband service providers to literally limit the usage of services by subscribers or customers.  When a particular customer, for example, has reached a certain limit for a particular service he/she is using, he/she may not be able to fully enjoy the benefits of the same service.  When this concern happens, the customer would then ask about it through the service providers call center or support center, and they would explain to the same customer that he/she is on “FUP exceeded” status.

In the case of Internet and broadband subscribers, when a customer reaches a certain limit of surfing the Web and downloading files from the Internet, the speed of his/her broadband service may be lowered by his/her provider.  Instead of the expected speed of 2 MBPS, for example, this particular customer may be tagged as ‘FUP exceeded’ and be given only 512 kbps for the remaining days of a particular month.  This happens because of the FUP or Fair Usage Policy.  With this policy, service providers may limit their services to some of their customers who regularly reach a pre-determined limit in terms of surfing and/or downloading files.  For surfing and downloading, either the speed or amount of data may be curtailed in order to ensure that other customers of the same provider will also continue to enjoy use of their own services. The curtailment is basically done to ensure that all subscribers still get to surf and/or download files over the Internet at any given time.  So when there are too many people using the broadband service at the same time, the only way for service providers to please everybody is to implement FUP and set some limits for those who use a lot of bandwidth regularly.  FUP is also applicable to mobile phone subscribers wherein some may be promised unlimited calls at first, but when there’s too much traffic, a certain limit may be imposed upon subscribers with heavy mobile usage.