Hello world! Some of you may know that as a pioneering change in computing history... If not then go and have a peek around and the first person to comment here with the answer gets 10 points.
This is my first ever blog on business support and what we offer, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Chris Dixon and you may have had a chat with me on the phones. I have been an employee here at Plusnet for 3 years in November and in my opinion have come a long way from starting as a Customer Services agent back in 2006! Time really does fly when you’re having fun. I have had the luxury of progressing through the job roles at Plusnet up to a Technical Support Agent, I have been to Durban twice to help our excellent colleagues there when we started their move to Workplace (Workplace being the quintessential system that makes Plusnet!). And, finally, I have settled down as a Business Support Analyst, here to make your life that little bit easier.
As I'm sure you have already noticed we currently have a whole new offering of business products, suitable for any sized business and a few consumer customers as well that wants to taste the business support. Some of you ‘oldies’ from the Plusnet community may know this has been a long time coming and I’m sure we have not disappointed in the pricing.
Our current offerings start from as low as £10 per month! Jeez! And that's for a business-class broadband service. The price of your package will be dependent on if you’re in what is deemed as a low-cost area, and if you are in those areas it will make your price cheaper. I really don't like 'cheap' as a descriptive word for our packages as it makes you feel like you’re losing something in return for it being so well priced... But fear not, you get a plethora of features in addition to just a broadband service, which makes Plusnet an attractive proposition no matter where you live!
On our Options 1 & 2 packages you have usage limits of 10GB and 50GB per month respectively, but what it doesn’t mention in the headline figures is that any usage between midnight and 8am is free. So, if your systems are set to perform all your backup work or file downloads in this window then it won’t count, which could account for a lot of usage overall. As always, you can see what your usage is like on our near-instant View My Broadband Usage tool, so you can check that you are on the right package.
Webspace is available on all packages so you can host your website with us and trim down the overall costs of having this all separate and scattered around different companies. May I add this is at no extra cost apart from what you pay monthly and, depending on the package you choose, you can have up to 5 domains hosted free!
You can get yourself a static IP address if you require, we will even give you up to 16IPs should you need it, and guess how much extra this costs? Yeah, you got it, nothing - yet another area where we could save you money.
We have a VoIP platform that can seriously reduce the monthly outgoing on the phone bill and is a lot easier on the pockets. Each account can have this added upon request, and you get up to 480 minutes to any UK landline per month which, again, is free. You just have to ask nicely 
For those customers that need their upload speed as fast as possible, we have an option called Max Premium. This simply increases your maximum possible upstream speed from 448k up to 832k, which can make a real difference if you are constantly backing up systems or sending large files. This is available for £7 ex VAT on our Options 1 & 2, but comes free with our top package, Option 3.
We offer something for the more internet-reliant businesses called Enhanced Care. This basically means that if you raise a fault to us via our website we will respond to you within an hour, and we aim to get these fixed within 24 hours. You’re probably thinking “hmmm, the word ‘aim’ does not fill me with confidence”, but our findings show that 90% of Enhanced Care faults raised are fixed within 24 hours, and the remaining 10% are normally down to arranging access for BT engineers. Honestly, if you depend on your internet connection then this is the service for you.
On top of all the above, you have our outstanding UK based dedicated business support team at your disposal, and we really do go that extra mile. We all have a passion for making sure it’s done right, and it’s done right first time. You can read more about how to contact us and the service you can expect here, but to expand on that link we’re a highly skilled and ever expanding team of agents, with vast experience in all areas of broadband. There’s always someone in the team who will know the answer to even the trickiest of questions, so we’re confident we can meet your needs.
Speaking of the team... what have we been up to recently? We don't just dabble in standard ADSL connections. We have recently been trialling a service supporting a line bonding system operating on a platform called Sharedband. This enables us to install up to 4 ADSL lines together, all of which are configured to utilize an aggregation server hosted with us. Combining the achievable throughput with some impressive results! We’re currently going through a period of evaluation on Sharedband, and we’ll hope to share the results and our plans on this in 2010.
A trial of FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) is underway, where instead of using copper wiring from the exchange to your property BT use a bit of fibre optic cable for a large chunk of the distance. You can probably imagine that you will end up getting some seriously good connection speeds! One of our resident business agents Mark Cundall has been involved with this along with the legendary Dave Tomlinson, and they are working on getting some more details about this posted in the coming weeks.
Last, but by no means least, is our Partner programme. We have a system in place for companies to be able to administer their own broadband accounts, coupled with a rock solid support model. This can work for resellers - you can sell your own broadband service without any of the hassle of getting your own network infrastructure in place, and simply deal with Plusnet on a helpdesk to helpdesk basis. Similarly, if you have an estate of ADSL assets for your company you will find the Partner Portal an invaluable tool in managing them; it’s an all-inclusive system with your invoicing, support and ordering systems all under one roof. You can request more information on this here – just log in as a ‘Guest’ and resubmit the URL – and we’ll contact you to see if Plusnet Partner is the right move for your business.
Though it seems we’ve covered a lot, we are only scratching the surface of what we on the Business Support team do on a regular basis, with more being added with each new customer, Partner and project – looks like blogging will be added to that list now! If you’re interested in joining us, have a look at our Business section which should contain all the answers you could need. If they don’t, call up for a chat and we’ll run through your needs and what we can do for you.
Over and out.
Chris