back to article Plusnet speeds up, slows down

Plusnet is cranking up download speeds from 38Mb to 52Mb for Unlimited Fibre broadband customers. But there’s a sting in the tail, as upload speed is reduced from "up to 19Mb" to "up to 9.4Mb". The changes take effect on August 1, and a month later the BT-owned ISP is raising prices all round on September 1, 2016. There is a …

  1. Steven Jones

    Plusnet and 40/2...

    More recently, Plusnet had been selling the GEA-FTTC 40/2 mbps product, and not the 40/20 it started out with originally. That, I believe used the GEA-FTTC 80/20 product and throttled download in the network.

    So for recent customers this is much better all round. It is all what Infinity 1.

  2. MrWibble

    "Speeds down, slows up", surely?

  3. Vince

    So if you're a PlusNet customer on the 80/20 variant, presumably you still get that.

    If you had the 40/20 capped variant you'll move to 55/10? Or you stay as you are?

    And if you'd joined them more recently you get to go from 40/2 to 55/10.

    Price increases aside (and boy are some of those price rises crazy - how much for call setup again?!) ... it's going to be a bit of a mixed bag if you're using them. Some lose, some win, almost all get a price increase...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Its easy to shift ISPs

    I am a PlusNet 40/20 customer who specifically chose PN because of the better upload speed. My little green box is about 40 metres away and I current get 38/19 Mb/s which is pretty good.

    I am not a gamer or big downloader of movies etc and I find that the actual achieved download speed for most websites that I visit is limited by the website itself. It can't push out data at rates to match my current 38MB/s so any increase is pointless. I use my upload speeds for my own private cloud and other services.

    To say the least I am pretty pissed off with PN and if I can't continue to get my current upload speed then at least I can play the market and get special offers by shifting ISPs. I hope they rot.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Site-to-site backup

    I run a VPN between my house and my aged parents house so I can keep an offsite backup (both ways). I was looking for an ISP that would make the transfer of full backups as short as possible: Plusnet were high on that list, but this makes it unlikely I will opt for them. This is irritating. There are not many offers of good upstream throughputs.

  6. David Gosnell

    Lowest common denominator

    This seems to be part of a shift towards lowest common denominator easy customers, rather than being the savvy choice for more demanding users as in the pre-BT past. Plusnet know there's probably no-one offering a 40/20 service now, so the offered contract termination without penalty is pointless. They are shifting the responsibility of selling products they probably never should have offered on to the customers to pick up the pieces. Many customers on the borderline for 40/20 in the first place will see no benefit whatsoever from the change to 55/10. For those seeing the marginal increase, it may or may not be that useful in practice; we'd have gone for 80/20 if download speed was of prime importance, so I would say there are two main categories of affected users: those who know they've been screwed over by this, and those who don't yet but will all too soon. The only silver lining is that at least we're not on 40/2 which they're selling to new mugs right now, though what happens at end of contract is rather vague.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Download now slower - upload still the same

    So Plusnet have only managed half a job and cut downloads, but not increased uploads

    https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Is-this-a-mistake/td-p/1346053/page/15

    1. David Gosnell

      Re: Download now slower - upload still the same

      Yup, I came on here to update with that twist. Apparently the changeover from the download-throttled 80/20 to pukka 56/10 that was supposed to have happened on 1 August will actually be taking place over several weeks, depending on the thumb-twiddling rate of BT. In the meantime Plusnet have moved users to a download-and-upload-throttled 80/20 to simulate 56/10 and by all accounts made a royal balls-up of it by not increasing the download for many despite line capability. I'm OK (getting around 52/9.5 on average) but interestingly I haven't had a download throttle for several months anyway for whatever reason, and that's probably why I'm not now stuck on 40/10 like so many are, despite still being on a throttled 80/20 according to BT. Worryingly for those who opted to pay extra to get pukka 80/20 after the infamous announcement, Plusnet can't be certain they won't be downgraded to 56/10 when BT eventually get round to "upgrading" their connection. Mindbending? Yup, even for Plusnet support staff it seems, who are even more in the dark than the customers by all accounts.

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