Business account closure possibly moving back to residential and rdns

[#1]

---

@Townman wrote:

Just looked there myself (literally a few minutes ago).

If ordering FTTC, they present two options...

1. Keep phone line with existing supplier (need the line to deliver the broadband service)
2. Move phone line to A&A for £10+ pcm -NO PHONE CALLS - not clear if that means the line cannot be used for voice services (i.e. SOGEA) or it means the cost of making calls is not included

It is an utter shambles!

---

I got the impression that it did not matter whether the line came over or whether it is SOGEA there was a £10 charge. If the line came over it did no include calls, I think he said 1.5P a minute landline 4p mobile. I'm happy to stay Plusnet residential with one static IP and in two years time I will see where we are at, but even this seems to be a problem.

[#2]

---

@TownmanHave you looked at Zen ? they seem to be £29/m for SoGEA ( including the copper pair I think ? ) , Digital voice adds £5/m

---

I had forgotten about the business side of Zen. This comes in at £34.80 inc vat with one static ip. There is a £15.00 setup fee and I asked why this was there. I was told that to go from a circuit with voice and broadband requires an engineer to visit the cabinet to fit something that suppresses the voice element of the line. Hopefully this does not affect the speed. Any one had any experience of this?

[#3]

I was told that to go from a circuit with voice and broadband requires an engineer to visit the cabinet to fit something that suppresses the voice element of the line. Hopefully this does not affect the speed. Any one had any experience of this?

Sounds like 'male cow excement' to me!. An engineer MAY need to go to the exchange to disconnect the voice pair BUT I doubt it. Its more likely a remote deactivation of the voice circuit.

It seems from the website https://www.zen.co.uk/campaigns-business/business-sogea the £15 is more of a general migration/activation charge.

[#4]

@Louc - I would query that last statement. When Zen moved me to SoGEA, it was done overnight (around 0400) and was totally automatic.

[#5]

Login was sort of correct except they got the spelling for broardband wrong in the user name 😞

Tried again this morning and it works, didn't need any fancy VLAN setting (it was suggested that for City fibre you needed VLAN 911 - you don't)

I set WAN2 as always on and PPPoE disabled WAN1

[#6]

I'm not a business customer of Pnet but I've just read through this thread (and the threads on Pnet mobile).

Possibly the (forced) migration away from PSTN gives BT leverage in growing their business. They can dictate 'stop sell'. BT also effectively own EE.

Personal insights from Niburu, Mister W and others are appreciated. For the Pnet staf? Well, you have my sympathies. Or perhaps their are new career paths opening up.

[#7]

---

@greygit1 wrote:

Possibly the (forced) migration away from PSTN gives BT leverage in growing their business. They can dictate 'stop sell'. BT also effectively own EE.

---

I understand the reason for BT to ditch the copper lines. It is becoming increasingly more expensive to maintain them. The problem is that they have gone the wrong way about implementing this or going too fast. I worked for BT many years ago it was one of the best jobs I ever had but.... even when it became a private company attitudes did not change and I suspect even now the mentality is still rooted in the old public sector mindset. Most of the managers were lacking in the most basic of managerial skills. Plusnet now have a dedicated migration team because apparently some of the front line staff were incorrectly carrying out  migrations\allocation of static ip's etc. So instead of educating the few staff that were allegedly doing this wrong they performed a knee jerk reaction and banned all front line staff from carrying out these tasks. I may be wrong and this may have been a Plusnet management decision but it smacks so much of the old BT public sector way of doing things. One person is bad.... tar everybody with the same brush. So my sympathies also go to the front line staff.

I was promised another call by close of play today..... guess what? Nada

[#8]

---

@Townman wrote:

...others are charging less for SOGEA than PTSN+FTTC - looks like A&A's +£10 for the copper required for the SOGEA (FTTC service) is just milking users.

---

Were all things equal that might be fair comment, but they are not and I don't think it is.

A&A are passing on the charge for the copper pair made by BT Openreach. BT are the ones milking customers by forcing them off the PSTN before the FTTP rollout is complete. Ofcom are off the ball (again), provding yet another incentive for BT to exploit the disruption it has created.

Other providers may choose to average the cost of the copper pair across the customer base but that is their decision to make, as is charging the recurring per IP subnet fees that cost nothing to maintain and A&A include. The people also need to be paid for and both the response and depth of knowledge is significantly better at A&A. Sadly the UK public has a tendency to under-value technical expertise, the immense amount of hours that are personally invested to acquire it, and the wages paid to retain it.

In the current economic climate it was a difficult decision to sign up to the additional cost of A&A. However, it paid off almost immediately thanks to PN ceasing our service 5 days early. The premature switch cost us about a £1000 in business disruption but we avoided having to send the staff home for 3 days thanks to A&A going above and beyond.

[#9]

I think you miss the point - one cannot deliver FTTC / SOGEA without a copper line.  For A&A to be offering SOGEA at a similar price to everyone else (or somewhat higher) and then adding £10 on top if someone else is not providing the copper is disingenuous.  If it is SOGEA then the only bit of the copper which is used is the d-side between the cabinet and the property - the much longer e-side trunk is redundant.

It is no different to the historic practices which Ofcom addressed where broadband was charged at £Y plus £x for the (unwanted) "telephone" service.  The practice is no different to buying a new car ... then finding out you'll be charged extra to put tyres on it.

[#10]

---

@Townman wrote:

If it is SOGEA then the only bit of the copper which is used is the d-side between the cabinet and the property - the much longer e-side trunk is redundant.

To the customer the e-side is functionally redundant, however it remains connected in the exchange where the electronics that does line monitoring and fault testing continues to reside.

My understanding is that SOGEA is physically identical to FTTC, except SOGEA no longer has analogue telephone voice signals associated with the cable.  So given that the 'line rental' is for the identical copper pair, then I can see why BT Wholesale would still charge for it.

At one point I had hoped the e-side would be disconnected if moved to SOGEA, as that would halve the overall length of my landline cable, and therefore 'should' have resulted in better VDSL performance if only the cabinet to master socket cable remained. Unfortunately that isn't how it works in practice.

.

[#11]

"however it remains connected in the exchange where the electronics that does line monitoring and fault testing continues to reside"

Ouch!!! Really?

One can see that being possibly needed for testing the d-side copper pair, but for FTTC monitoring and testing, one would have hoped that was all done in a sub-channel over the fibre network ... and certainly not done on a per subscriber over their copper e-side.  One would hope that the interfaces in teh FTTC cabinet could have tested the d-side ... or at least given sufficient indication that the d-side is borked!

Such a topology is going to make the suggested copper recovery opportunity of e-side trunk cables yet another technology hurdle!  That infers no copper recovery until all subscribers are on full fibre ... which in some areas might be a decade away ... by plan!

The demise of PTSN and the availability of full fibre in all areas are on different timelines.

[#12]

---

@mssystems wrote:

---

 The people also need to be paid for and both the response and depth of knowledge is significantly better at A&A. Sadly the UK public has a tendency to under-value technical expertise, the immense amount of hours that are personally invested to acquire it, and the wages paid to retain it.

---

I agree that technical expertise is undervalued, I have been there. But the jump from some providers prices to A&A is huge. I would have accepted £35 which was already a lot higher but £45 was a deal breaker for me. I agree that they are more knowledgeable, but to be honest once I am up and running I would not be expecting to contact them very often. I hardly ever did with Plusnet, because if I had, I would have left them a long time ago as their customer services/technical expertise started going down the pan around 10 years ago. I have now taken the jump and ordered Vodafone Business on a deal which is not on their website. 12 months at £15 Inc Vat and then 12 months at £30 inc vat. They even include the digital phone line for free, though this won't be of any use to me unless I can get the sip credentials as I will be using my own router.

As for Plusnet I have still, after 17 days not received a single call from them, I have chased this around 10 times with supervisors allegedly being informed on many of those calls. If I was paranoid I would have started to believe that there is a flag on my account that says 'We do not want this persons business' as I cannot believe that all these attempts has resulted in no contact. I cannot see any company that deals with issues in this way lasting too long in the market.

[#13]

though this won't be of any use to me unless I can get the sip credentials as I will be using my own router.

@Louc you might find this thread useful

https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Landline/Landline-phone-with-own-router-on-FTTP/m-p/2709457#M1354

[#14]

---

@MisterW wrote:

though this won't be of any use to me unless I can get the sip credentials as I will be using my own router.

@Louc you might find this thread useful

https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Landline/Landline-phone-with-own-router-on-FTTP/m-p/2709457#M1354

---

Thanks for that. I also run asterisk so it should be possible for me to connect once I have the details. If not, as this is now a digital service I should be able to port the number to a supplier who I have used before to port a number (Old Plusnet\Gradwell sip to sip port) I did ask the sales person if the digital line is definitely separate from the broadband (which it should be) but there was hesitation and I would not necessarily expect them to know. I will deal with that once I am up and running.

Apparently I will be receiving a voip adapter but I presume this is to just convert the phone cable to the port on the rear of the Vodafone router. If it was a true voip box with the details in then I should be able to just connect to a lan port on the router or switch. I have a few voip boxes but unfortunately they have all blown on me.

[#15]

I also run asterisk so it should be possible for me to connect once I have the details

@Louc there's a link in that thread to https://github.com/clayface/VF-UK-Asterisk-config which should give more details for asterisk. I run Freepbx/Asterisk in the office with 20 DID numbers on an A & A account but use Localphone for outgoing as its 1/2 the price of A & A rates.