Super-fast Plusnet Fibre gets even faster

[#1]

A special thanks

Plusnet Extra Fibre replaces the older 'up to 38Mbps' Extra Fibre product and is available to both new and existing customers right now. The launch of the product also marks the end of our 80/20 service trials that have been running since January. Almost 700 customers took part in the trial and we'd like to thank you all for the valuable feedback you've provided over recent months. Here's what some of you had to say about the service:

"So far so good, I'm very impressed with the connection speed. I probably do download a little bit more as I know it takes a fraction of the time than it used to. In Youtube I just go for the HD video's now as there is very little or no buffering." "Love it to bits!" "It has been a pleasure being on the trial, and can say that I have benefited from it when downloading ISO's or paid for Games." "It has, so far, improved my fibre speed considerably, and has proved to be very reliable." "It's been a better product than the 40/2 fibre that I was on before as it seems more responsive" "80/20 fibre has been very reliable and consistently fast during the trial. Since using 80/20 my activity has increased, mainly streaming video" "Fabulous!"

Up, up and away

One recurring piece of feedback we've received since launching our fibre products is the desire for higher upload speeds. More and more people are uploading photos and videos to the Internet and using online back-up and storage solutions like iCloud and Google Drive, which makes upload speed more important than ever. Our new Extra Fibre product offers upload speeds 'up to 19.5Mbps' dependent on your location and line conditions. With speeds like that, waiting an age to upload snaps to Facebook or that funny video of your pet to YouTube becomes a thing of the past. The good news doesn't stop there though because we're also planning to increase all existing Fibre customers upload speed from 'up to 1.9Mbps' to 'up to 9.5Mbps' over the next few months - for free.

More usage

Another piece of feedback we often receive concerns usage allowances so you'll also be pleased to hear that the new Plusnet Extra Fibre also comes with a significantly healthier 250GB peak-time usage allowance. Usage outside of our peak-time period continues to be completely unmetered.

But what about ..?

We're sure that both prospective and existing Plusnet Fibre customers alike will have plenty of questions about the new Plusnet Extra Fibre product so we've prepared a handy guide about how fibre optic broadband works that we hope answers any queries you might have.

Thinking about switching to fibre? Perhaps you've already made the plunge and would like to share your experiences? How are you going to make the most out of the faster upload speed? Get in touch by leaving a comment below ...  

[#2]

I have no doubt that Super-fast Plusnet Fibre with download speeds ‘up to 76Mbps’ is great news. For me, I would much sooner more resource is given to increasing my very low 0.3Mbps to 0.5Mbps speed which I and hundreds of thousands of rural broadband users get. As top end speeds get faster, we are being left further and further behind.

[#3]

Make that millions of rural users, John. My local BT exchange is fairly close, which makes me one of the luckier rural users, but cable of any sort (like any sort of 3G signal from O2 for that matter) is a very long way off.

[#4]

I absolutely agree, we in rural areas are bring forgotten about and left far behind

[#5]

John, as a commercial ISP and due to the infrastructure we rely on, there's not a huge amount of resource we can invest in improving the situation for rural inhabitants. The debate about the digital divide is a very involved one and probably falls outside of the scope of this blog article. It's always interesting to hear the views of customers who aren't as geographically fortunate from a broadband perspective though.

[#6]

So what's PN doing to help influence the deployment of fibre to the home and fibre to the cabinet away from major towns and cities?

[#7]

I live in Livingston in the central belt in Scotland. Not exactly a rural community, but our exchange (Livingston Station) has been FTTC enabled for nearly 18 months with no sign of rollout to cabinets in our area. BT Wholesale's approach appears to be aimed at hitting the artificial targets of number of FTTC enabled exchanges rather than number of users able to take up the service. Even more annoying that it seems very difficult to find out when FTTC will actually be rolled out to street cabinets, which is the real metric of availability. A bit more visibility of rollout plans would be a good start..

[#8]

Bernard, the first suggestion is to head over to this page: http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/expression-gen.aspx And spread that link round to people you know in your area that also want fibre. Openreach are the ones in charge of the rollout and have set up that page for people to let them know where they want fibre as such the best thing we can do is direct people to this page as it's a centralised location that everyone (regardless of ISP) can register their interest.

[#9]

If we can't get super fast speeds and huge download allowances how about showing some solidarity with rural users and remove download caps?

[#10]

Are there no prospective dates when running your number through this Pete? - http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome Worth considering that just because an exchange is enabled, it doesn't mean your cabinet will. Premises served directly by the exchange (rather than via a PCP cabinet) and refused planning permission are a couple of reasons why cabinets don't get enabled.

[#11]

Pat, we've non-fibre products with allowances up to 60GB during peak hours. Having said that, we'll probably revisit that amount before too long. In the mean time we've a non-advertised product available that allows you 120GB of peak-time usage. Have a read of the forum thread here for further details - http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,104955.msg899705.html#msg899705

[#12]

Great news Loving the 1.50 saving ontop of the other trial benefits, awesome work :) Quick Point: The 'Upgrade process' states that my line rental will be 12.99 (thus making it MORE expensive, as currently its 0.00) - if i upgrade, am I gonna end up being billed line rental again, or has this been accounted for, and is just a displayed bug? Matt

[#13]

I'm guessing you have our Line Rental Saver product Matt? If so, you needn't worry, it's just a display bug.

[#14]

All very well annoucing it's getting faster but it would be nice to have updates as to where plusnet is going and will be available.

[#15]

This is good news, though we here in Fenland (March specifically, a town of 20,000 people) will have to wait until the end of 2013 to get fibre (BT's rollout schedule, I know). What I really need is the upstream boost though. Sending gigabytes of photos to clients is a real pain!

[#16]

Rob. Fibre availability is dependent on Openreach's roll-out schedule. Have a look here for more info - http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/

[#17]

I am currently on the old Fibre Extra Product and would like the extra usage and faster speeds, if I want to upgrade the to the new Extra Fibre, do I have to pay the current contract off (as if I am leaving) and then start the new one, or will it just renew the current contract for 18 months (no cost incurred apart from a £2~ increase)?

[#18]

It just renews the current contract Greg, you don't have to pay anything off. Not sure where you're getting the ~£2 increase from though? Your monthly subscription should reduce from £21.49 to £19.99.

[#19]

Ah sorry, my mistake. I was looking at the Extra Fibre Broadband & anytime calls. I hardly ever use my phone so I guess I will be saving money if I choose Fibre Extra with calls Are there any differences between the two apart from the call package? If not, awesome! Better package for less

[#20]

Nope, the broadband element is the same, it's just the call package that differs.

[#21]

Thanks bob, Great news !

[#22]

Is a change from the old Fibre Extra Product to new Extra Fibre (without calls) not subject to £25 fee?

[#23]

I don't normally add comments to these, but considering the amount of negativity I'm reading thought I would. As far as I'm concerned Bob, Dave & Everyone at PN have done a great job with each of the trials getting the users involved. Now getting this package cheaper and with more allowance was completely unexpected surprise. I appreciate it doesn't help those in rural areas, but it's great news for the rest of us. Thanks PN.

[#24]

@Robbo the Yobbo, no changing between fibre products isn't subject to the £25 activation fee. @Jodi, thanks!

[#25]

Thanks Bob! Good show PN!

[#26]

This is great news, and something I have been hoping to hear. Probably came about bit quicker than I had set myself to expect. Received the email today, checked the viability for my phone line and was surprised to be told it was now available (last time I checked, only a few months ago, there was no availability and no indication of when it might be available). I have placed an upgrade order and will save money as I am coming from a legacy unlimited plan (to 250Gb cap - does not sound too bad) that had harsh upload limitations and some download throttling (problem for work VPN, as well as video on demand services that needed to be convinced I was in USA). Congrats to all at PN for pulling this new competitive offering together and to all those who helped trial the service. Fingers cross there will not be some last minute news to tell me that the service is not viable to my home for some obscure technical reason. Next step will be to upgrade to fibre to the premises when that becomes available (if at all) in my area.

[#27]

I live a rural area but completely unexpectedly received notification of FTTC availabiity in late 2011. It is a fantastic service, albeit a few teething problems, mainly due to my line but BT resolved those after a couple of months and now I have 32Mbps down/1.8Mbps up.No looking back to ADSL 0.5Mbps! Well done PN keep up the excellent standard!

[#28]

This is great and I am pleased to be changing to the new product. But is this a change of policy for Plus Net? In the past I remember being really impressed that Plus Net had automatically upgraded me to a better or cheaper package as it became available. Colleagues, friends, people I had referred were likewise impressed - most are still with Plus Net. Now it seems like I have to be paying attention if I am not to be caught out and paying more than is necessary. I hope I am mistaken but for me right now, just a little of that hard earned trust has been lost.

[#29]

Martin, we emailed existing Extra Fibre customers yesterday to let them know about the new 76Mbps product.

[#30]

Is there an estimated time for the change to go through. Upgraded yesterday (on the £21.49 Extra Fibre already) and got through to the new product 'thank you' page, but no email confirmation. No rush, but it would be good to know when I should be looking out for the upgrade.

[#31]

OK so that's a yes then. Plus Net doesn't automatically move customers onto the cheapest/fastest compariable product as they used to. This was one of the reasons Plus Net was a brilliant ISP in my book.

[#32]

All this talk of speeds are far better than anything I have ever had. Our connection is at best 8mb download and 911 kbps. Plusnet have some way to go before we are anything like impressed with PN!

[#33]

Matt, the increase in speed will happen around five working days after the upgrade - http://community.plus.net/8020-fibre-faq/ whilst your account change will take place on your next billing date. Martin, we're increasing upload automatically for older Extra Fibre customers. I'm a tad confused if I'm honest. I've been here some time now, and for almost all of the product refreshes we've had, we *haven't* automatically moved customers to the new products. We have been chastised in the past for not emailing people about the changes but this is something we have done on this occasion. Colin, you speeds are very likely limited by the physical condition of your line, the services BT Wholesale have available in your area, and the distance you are from your exchange. All three of those things are very much outside of our control. This line checker will give you a fairly realistic expectation of the speeds we can provide you with - http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

[#34]

Bob. Perhaps it is I who is confused but it does seem quite simple to me. You improve the product and drop the price and don't give that existing customers automatically. Why would anyone want to be left on the old spec of the product? Is there some disadvantage to moving to the cheaper, faster one with more allowance? If it were you, wouldn't you starting thinking that the supplier is just out to make a few pounds from existing customers, rather than doing the "good honest" thing and switching them to upgraded/cheaper version of the product? In the past (perhaps not always - but it did happen at least once it could be as long ago as 2003) Plus NET has automatically reduced the monthly cost of my internet connection. Furthermore, when I started on ADSL I wasn't getting the 10Mb that I was getting when I moved to FTTC; it just got better every so often. Despite this I am still very much looking forward to uprated Extra Fibre product

[#35]

Hi Martin, "Is there some disadvantage to moving to the cheaper, faster one with more allowance?" Yes, you're re-contracted to another 18 month's service. That's why people have been given the option. If we were just out to make a few pounds then we wouldn't be increasing the upload speed of all existing customers (there's a significant wholesale cost associated with it). I can see your point though, and whilst it would have been nice to have moved everybody without extending their contracts, it wasn't agreed based on the economics.

[#36]

Thanks for the in depth answer Bob. Yes, I had spotted the 18 month contract - not a down side for me as I have not even been on Fibre for a month yet. I think I would still feel a little aggrieved if I were still on the slower version and paying more but I will accept that things are nothing like as unreasonable as initially suggested. Fortunately for me, my line has just been switched and I am now getting about 73Mb/s down & 16Mb/s up stream so I am very very happy.

[#37]

I have just upgraded my Extra Fibre and am delighted to have faster speeds, cheaper monthly price and bigger allowance. Great work PlusNet! I live in Bodmin, Cornwall, and I have been with PlusNet since 2003 and although I have had a few grumbles along the way I am now a very satisfied customer. http://www.speedtest.net/result/2137832583.png

[#38]

So much for 'automatic upgrade'...I live in W London, and have finally discovered today that the cut-off of my broadband service on 9th Aug (which is still not working as of today, 31st Aug!) was apparently due to an 'automatic upgrade' to c.12Mps. However, Plusnet seemed to have no way of connecting this 'routine' upgrade with my sudden loss of service. After several days fiddling around being told it was our router's problem, it was finally diagnosed as faulty equipment at the exchange. This after my husband had wasted his whole sunny Sunny Sat (18th Aug) waiting for a BT engineer's visit (a no-show!). Then we were told an order for new equipment at the exchange would mean a wait till 27th Aug. it was then delayed again till 31st Aug. Today Plusnet told me that BT Wholesale had cancelled our order this very morning, we have to wait for our order to be fully cancelled, and then the order has to be re-placed with BT Wholesale. Can someone please fix the communications breakdown with BT Wholesale (and OpenReach if they're the ones who manage the engineers?) and Plusnet, as these continuing delays are driving me to want to leave Plusnet, even though I have been a loyal customer for MANY years, and have recommended them to others. Thanks!

[#39]

Thanks very much, Just let us know if you do encounter any further problems. Adam

[#40]

Since upgrading to Plusnet Extra Fibre a couple of months ago my average download speed has gone from 37mps to 38mps. Between us we have agreed that I can get 64mps when connected via a wired ethernet connection from the test results but that is no good to me as I require a wireless connection. Due to the wired speed Plusnet seem to have now taken a 'tough' interest. It appears strange that when I first had broadband and getting 12mps then upgrading to fibre and getting 37mps and now extra fibre and getting 38mps. Nothing has changed, the router and BT box are in the same place and no additional items have been installed in the house to cause interference so why such a poor wireless signal with extra fibre. Suggestions welcome.

[#41]

Steve, 38Mbps is *far* from a 'poor' wireless signal. In fact it's close to the maximum I'd expect if using a 802.11b/g network adapter. If using an 802.11n adapter then you may get higher speeds but bear in mind that having non-802.11n devices connecting to the router at the same time may affect the throughput on the 'n' device. Even if all of your devices are using 802.11n you'd be lucky to get 64mbps. As a general rule of thumb, half the advertised wireless speed of a router and *then* allow for overheads/signal degradation/interference/differing wireless technologies etc. So on a 150Mbps device (which the 582n is): 150 / 2 = 75Mbps - overheads. You /might/ fare better with a 300n wireless router however my advice would be to invest the money in a wired solution like Powerline adapters instead.

[#42]

HA! Fibre optic broadband, so far they have not even been able to connect a phone line and connect basic broadband, they took my money anyway...I would not pay them for any 'upgraded' service unless you can test it first!

[#43]

@unhappycustomer, sorry to hear that. I know Openreach engineers are dealing with a significant backlog of jobs at the moment but that's largely out of our hands. Is there some other reason your service is taking so long to provision? If you can provide a support ticket reference or some other means of me identifying your account then I'd be happy to take a look and see if there's anything I can do to help?

[#44]

be nice when i get fast broadband round here i just got 1mps atm and bt site says maybe end of 2013!! damn bt

[#45]

I've been on Fibre broadband for just over 6 months and, although the speed is better than non-fibre broadband I am somewhat disappointed. I was quoted 40 mps but rarely get more than 18 or 19 mps. This is despite the close proximity of the BT Fibre box to my house (it is located about 4 feet from my fence)

[#46]

@somewhat miffed, your line isn't always serviced by the closest cabinet, what estimate do you get here? - https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/pls/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

[#47]

I live in rural Lincolnshire and am in the process of migrating to Plusnet. In our village, we were fortunate to be included in the government Rural Broadband Initiative. We were chosen partly because we are not too far from our local town (Louth) and partly because our Parish Council kept up unrelenting pressure upon the Coounty and district Councils, to help. Also, many residents registered on the link shown above - http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/ - if you can get communities to act together, it bears fruit. We now have live FTTC and I have an engineer appointment at the end of this month, to install everything. I have to say that i have been kept up to date all the way by Plusnet, via E mail and both phones, much better service than my soon-to-be-ex-ISP. Some of those criticising here ought to try the speeds we had here last year: lower than dial-up, at times.

[#48]

Quite difficult leaving a compliment, but need to say very pleased today to find my fibre broadband has been upgraded. I was getting 31mbps download, and this has gone up to 38mbps, and the upload speed from 1.70mbps to 8.4mbps. Well done particularly for attending to upload speed. The ping is a nice 10ms too.

[#49]

No worries Mike, we've been busy upgrading all of our 40/10 customers since launching the faster 80/20 product a couple of month's back.

[#50]

i have plusnet for 5 or 6 years but then i change to to plusnet fibre its worst brouband i ever had dounload 3 uploud 4 goood?? so i just leaving them you can found better deals ppl they geting worst every year plus custumer servise is terible

[#51]

@ramas, sorry to hear you're not very happy worth there service, have you spoken to our helpdesk yet and if so do you have a support ticket reference you can provide me with?