Free speed upgrades to all PlusNet customers.

[zoombini]

Recenly announced for Plusnet customers (well those that use the support forums).

Free speed upgrades to all PlusNet customers.

Following BT’s recent announcement to increase Broadband speeds up to 8Mb across their local exchange network, PlusNet is delighted to offer free speed upgrades and a brand new product range.

From April, all PlusNet customers will be able to take advantage of the increased speeds as they become available. Existing PlusNet customers will be able to upgrade free of charge to the maximum available DSL speed. BT is working hard to ensure that as many people as possible are able to receive the maximum available speeds. Further, BT Wholesale’s changes enable the ISP to determine its customers’ actual speed setting, instead of this being set at BT's local exchange.

Upgrades to all fixed cost broadband product speeds

Premier customers will be able to choose the speed they wish to operate their connection at, from 512kb right up to 8Mb where available.

The Premier product range offers a clean DSL connection with no network restrictions or traffic shaping applied, enabling customers to run whatever applications they need to, at any time of the day, with no worries about speed or performance. In conjunction with this, PlusNet is implementing its “fair usage” policy in which it will deliver a commitment to its customers, ensuring platform performance is not disproportionately affected by a small minority of extremely heavy users.

Broadband Premier Fair Usage Total “Fair Usage” Achievable
Product On Peak Levels Inc Off Peak (based on 2Mb)
£21.99 30GB 230GB
£29.99 50GB 250GB
£39.99 75GB 275GB
£49.99 100GB 300GB
£59.99 125GB 325GB

The above table shows how prices relate to usage, rather than speed. Usage between 1am through 8am is excluded from “fair usage” levels, so if a customer schedules their downloads ‘off-peak’ they can achieve a far higher usage with no restrictions. Further, only download data is monitored, uploads are not restricted in any way.

Speed increases for PAYG products

PlusNet’s Broadband PAYG products, formerly known as “Lite”, will also be extended to include 4 and 8Mb speeds from April. At £14.99 per month, and £1.50 per GB thereafter, speeds of up to 8Mb will be a fantastic value product option for light and infrequent Broadband users.

Introducing Broadband Plus

Broadband Plus will be available from April. This product range will complement the existing Broadband Pay As You Go and Premier products, and will offer unrivalled price value. Broadband Plus is designed to meet the needs of the average Broadband user, looking for fast email and web browsing, with more advanced applications being more suitable on the Broadband Pay As You Go and Premier products. A fair usage system does not need to apply to Broadband Plus due to the way the product is designed and network managed.

Broadband Plus has a lower service-providing cost than the Premier products, which will be reflected in the pricing PlusNet will publish for Broadband Plus in the near future.
Marketing Director, Marco Potesta commented “The next few months are going to be very exciting for PlusNet and our customers, 8Mb speeds for £14.99 per month on Broadband Pay As You Go takes some beating. Moving from 512k to 8Mb speeds on a premium package and continuing to pay just £21.99 is even better news.”

Potesta added “The Broadband market is very fragmented. There are loads of small ISPs offering different products and it’s very confusing from a price and service perspective. Through ‘Broadband Pay As You Go’, ‘Broadband Plus’ and ‘Broadband Premier’, PlusNet has 3 simple product options that offer something for everyone, delivering market leading value, quality of service and a fantastic customer experience.”

If you haven't bought broadband yet, wish to upgrade, or migrate please go to
http://www.plus.net

E N D


Dang, things are getting good at last.

[jtwn]

If those are the charges based on 2mb, i dread to think what it is based on 8mb..

Thanks for posting :)

[Ignition]

No jumping up and down and screaming about capping? :)

[Bifta]

I'm probably reading it all wrong, but is that £21.99 for a 2 meg service with a 30gb monthly cap? If so, that's a bloody good price considering I'm paying £40 with Pipex and tend not to exceed that kind of bandwidth restriction anyway.

[Neil]

I'm probably reading it all wrong, but is that £21.99 for a 2 meg service with a 30gb monthly cap? If so, that's a bloody good price considering I'm paying £40 with Pipex and tend not to exceed that kind of bandwidth restriction anyway.

Pipex eh.....? ;)

[Bifta]

Pipex eh.....? ;)

Yeah .. and that was your fault! ;)

[Neil]

Yeah .. and that was your fault! ;)

Did you put me down as a referrer as we discussed then!? :angel:

[Bifta]

Did you put me down as a referrer as we discussed then!? :angel:

I have no idea! But seriously, if plus.net are offering a 30gb capped 2gb service for half the price of Pipex's then I'll swallow the £58 or so quid I'd have to pay as I'd make it back within 3 months.

[DeadKenny]

These prices are flat rate for any speed (the 'based on 2Mbps' in that article applies to the right hand column about the achievable speed, the prices as most people have understood it are the same for any speed).

PlusNet, like most ISPs, thanks to Capacity Based Charging from BT Wholesale are now saying that you don't pay for speed any more you pay for capacity. Basically you can have the fastest speed your line can support for the basic price.

With PlusNet that means you can (when it's available) in theory get 8Mbps for £14.99 a month under the Lite scheme. That's a 1GB cap of course and you then can pre-pay £1.50 per GB to add to it (£1.75 per GB PAYG).

For Premier customers you pay for a "fair use" kind of cap (you have to exceed it 3 months in a row though, and any downloads between 1am and 8am don't count).

For me, I use on average 16GB a month and pay £39.99 for 2Mbps Premier. This announcement means I can pay £21.99 a month for 30GB (and I can exceed that in one month without a problem so long as I reduce my use the following months).

Not only that, if it turns out my line can do 8Mbps when it's available... I get the speed increase for free!

Fantastic :D

Quitting NTL for PlusNet was definitely the best choice :D

NTL are living in the dark ages with their pay-by-speed charges and draconian caps :p:


Of course there will always be some people who will complain about caps, though these aren't strict caps on the Premier products. Those who (like the "bad boys" on PlusNet) use huge amounts (400GB a month!), have plenty of other ISPs to choose from who will cater for them, and then there are business/teleworker packages too.

[zoombini]

So if anyone wants to sign up for them, please remember you heard it from me first & can I be a referer to you... lol

I'm getting he max that my line can take.

[Millay]

when will we know what the max is on our lines, or is there a website we can check?

[scrotnig]

STILL no moans about capping.

I wonder why it's ok for PlusNet to have caps but not ntl?

[Millay]

Ive always said i would be happy to pay for extra bandwith rather than speed, hence i ownt moan sabout the caps :)

[scrotnig]

Agreed, it's just that every time ntl mention caps, a plethora of posters turn up to accuse ntl of destroying the internet and curbing free speech or breaching human rights, etc etc.

It just struck me as odd that when PlusNet announce a similar cap, these same people don't appear to mind. It's almost enough to make you think that they are in some way aggressively biased against ntl. But that's a bit far fetched, so it must obviously be me.

[MovedGoalPosts]

There seems to be a provocation in previous posts for objhections to this offer because of capping. Compared to other ISPs like ntl, this Plusnet is quite different. There are three issues here.
Speed versus price
Maximum speed available (subject to your BT phone line)
Cap versus price

On all three issues, on the face of it Plus net are way out in front of the ntl offering (as and when ntl get round to the coming soon upgrade). It just shows the pace at which the UK broadband market is starting to evolve as critical mass is achieved and OFCOM's deregulation of LLU is taking effect.

I do object, in principle to caps, when there is no choice offerred by the ISP. You take their service with the prescribed cap, or you can't have the service. In the case of cable cos that can really be hobsons choice, and can cost the consumer a load of money.

The original post is IMO to be welcomed as it indicates Plusnet are one of the first ISPs to acknowledge there is a difference between peak and offpeak use. Thye seek to migrate P2P users away from the peak contention periods when all the light users are on line, also stressing the network.

I must admit to being confused by the detail of the original post, and the maximum downloads cap versus price. Is the download limits irrespective of price. i.e. whether you can get 1Mbps, 2Mbps or 8Mbps, for £21.99 you can have 30GB monthly capacity, but for £39.99 you can have 75GB monthly capacity. If so that is good value. If however the service speed and download cap is on a sliding scale related to the service speed, that might not be so good.

Of course nothing is said in that post on the upload speed. Download is great but for gamers and the like upload speed increases are also important.

[Ignition]

STILL no moans about capping.

I wonder why it's ok for PlusNet to have caps but not ntl?

Here you go Mr Mark:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=unhappiness

A few upset people in there accusing Plus of being thieves, violating their human rights, etc ;)

[scrotnig]

Here you go Mr Mark:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=unhappiness

A few upset people in there accusing Plus of being thieves, violating their human rights, etc ;)
Ah thanks.....I was beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms.

[jtwn]

Yes, i went over to plusnet to see if the upload would be increased (imo, 256k ul on 8mb would be unacceptable) and their forums seem to look a bit like these forums, on the ntl front :D

[zoombini]

But they are not 30gb caps.

hey are 30gb peak AND 230gb of peak (1am-8am) so in fact you acually get 260gb for the p2p users.

otherwise it's not that restrictive & cerainly no worse than NTL.

If you go over the cap or 2 successive months on he 3rd you get estricted.
it's like cap credits.
go over for a month & you get 1 credit
reach 3 credits & you get restricted.
have a month of not going over & a cedit gets taken away.

so you can go over in times of need.

damn this kb, 't knacked.

[keithwalton]

I'm on plusnet and i find there new system acceptable and a good idea. Everyone is going to be upped to the max speed the line can handle (premier customers that is). Which can be as high as 8mbit. It's also a clever system in that it is not until the 3rd month in a row that you exceed your limit do they take any action. Plenty of time to sort out / dicuss issues.
It's not a cap but an acceptable limit thing. Oh there portal provides a full b/w tracking service so you know exactly how much you've used if you wanted to know.
If you didnt want a cap, you could allways move to the intermediate product 'broadband plus' which has no caps but p2p is blocked at peak times.

Oh also in there payg scheme you can get 0.5/1/2mbit all for £15 /month atm with varying costs of b/w on top of that

[zoombini]

What I don't find acceptable about it is what about the lite users?

I pay £23.99 or 6gb so why will I not get this then?
I shall just have to downgrade to 2mb @ £21.99 30GB 230GB :D

[keithwalton]

It does seem they may need to restructure there payg (lite) package to componsate as the bottom teir is going to infringe on it. They may reduce the standing rate of payg so its nearly all b/w used.
This is all a far cry from a few years ago where unlimited dialup was all the craize from altavista. Everything went unmetered but faster, now its going even faster but the meters are back

[Ignition]

It's not a cap but an acceptable limit thing. Oh there portal provides a full b/w tracking service so you know exactly how much you've used if you wanted to know.
If you didnt want a cap, you could allways move to the intermediate product 'broadband plus' which has no caps but p2p is blocked at peak times.

Bit of contradicting yourself there Mr Walton, no cap then 'if you don't want a cap...'

P2P and Usenet aren't blocked outside of 1am - 8am but are severely traffic shaped down so they run very slowly. A good product though for those who don't use such services.

Looks as though some Plus users disagree with you about all this: http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/index.php username guest password guest for those non-plus members.

Personally I like the announcement, quite a few packages for everyone and making users pay for what they use along with an unmetered period.

[Redd]

Just moved to plus net(48 hours)
Been monitoring my 2Meg speed. (Ha Ha)
I'm averaging 500K.
They sat £21 for up to 2meg.
I think they should change it to up to £21 if you can get 2meg.
At the end of the month I'd be paying £5 at this rate, but I'd rather have a decent speed.
Looks like I'll be moving ISP again

[DeadKenny]

From their main advert for Broadband Premier...

Broadband Premier comes at the fastest speed possible, up to 2Mb. If 2Mb is not available to you we will provide you with broadband at 1Mb or 512k.

So it is both "up to" and "if" you can get, and this is exactly the same as almost all ADSL based providers using BT's home products. Even BT say the same.

Chances are if you are on 512kbps then you'd have the same even with BT.

Do you know for certain the exchange has been upgraded to 2Mbps? Could be the line you've got is on the waiting list for the 2Mbps upgrade from BT as not everyone has been upgraded yet. Have you asked PlusNet about it? They can push through an upgrade early for a fee (£14.99 ) and investigate any problems. They have a very nice online customer support system (unlike a certain ISP we know well).

Could be you are too far from the exchange (in line length, not as the crow flies).

[Redd]

I was on 2meg with BT, and it was 2 meg.
I know that I can get 8meg, won't go into the details too convoluted.
So yes, I should be getting 2 meg, or close to it, not the paltry 500K that i'm getting now.
It's the wording of up to 2Meg that really gets me, because I suppose they are correct. It is up to 2Meg it's just that I'm not getting it.

[DeadKenny]

Contact PlusNet then. No point complaining about their wording if it's simply a fault that needs fixing and it won't be fixed unless you contact them. Their CS is very good in my opinion. Just go to your account section and raise a ticket with them. They'll get back to you pretty quick in my experience and are very helpful.

I can assure you they do provide 2Mbps as I get speeds around 2Mbps from PlusNet.

How are you measuring the 500k speed by the way?

[zoombini]

If you have not raised a ticket with them & told them then you may well have problems.

And 99% of the time these ARE BT based whatever your previous ISP was & what they provided.

Raise a ticket explaining the problems and how it worked at 2mb before.

The package is called "upto 2mb" because in many cases people may not be able to get 2mb due to the distance between them & the exchange etc so they will have whatver lower speed BT can get a stable signal at. However everyone at 2mb & below is lumped into the same pay scale.

I have just had my upgrade to 2mb & it's working fine.
Took ages to happen but now it's fine.