PlusNet have announced changes to their broadband packages. As expected they’ve moved to charging on a download capacity basis rather than speed. April will see all their customers moving to the fastest line possible from their exchange and later in the year onto 4 & 8Meg connections if the exchange supports it. Class. Details of the fair usage policy can be found here – £21.99 per month for 2Meg speed and potentially 230Gig download a month sounds an absolute bargain 🙂
I’ve been with Demon for over 8 years now and never had any real cause for complaint but they’re falling dramatically behind on the Broadband front. They’ve just offered a 1Mb upgrade for £29.99/month no limits. Generally they’re rock solid but recently the cracks have started to show. They resisted going to 1Mb for residential customers for so long and the month they announce it BT go and throw a spanner in the works by doubling everything. This deal from Plus.net looks very good and as I’m past my 12 month minium contract with Demon Broadband I need to consider my options very carefully. I take it you’ve been happy with them so far? The huge off-peak download capacity is hard to resist as it practically makes it uncapped.
Plus.net have been great so far. Support (compared to BT) has been amazing. They are open and honest about technical issues affecting the platform and you can easily raise tickets for issues you may have. The website tools are also very good and easy to follow. They also have very active discussion forums that cover a lot of the technical issues – all open, nothing censored.
There is a lot of heat in the forums right now with the fair usage policy. People are annoyed with 2 things:
1) They signed up for unlimited bandwidth but PlusNet are introducing a cap
2) If you are paying £29.99 and want to reduce the payment to £21.99 and increase your speed you have to pay a re-grade fee. If your monthly price is increasing or staying the same you don’t pay anything.
For me issue 1 is a non-event. Yes there are caps but they don’t slow you down unless you download more than the 30Gb for 3 consecutive months. You can easily see the bandwidth you’ve used on the PlusNet site and for the last 3 months I haven’t gone over 20Gb – although there were two months last Autumn where I went over 40Gb. Also the new bandwidth limit doesn’t include uploads which it currently does. So for £21.99 I can have 2 Meg broadband with a 30Gig cap during the day but unlimited downloading from 1AM to 8AM – thats 200Gig. Not a problem. As for issue 2 – I’ll save the regrade fee in just 2 months at the reduced rate – who cares!!
I can’t recommend them highly enough. I’ve no doubt there may be a better provider but I’m more than happy with the year & half service so far and I’m impressed with how they’ve tackled the issue of high broadband users – the ones that are most annoyed are downloading well over 150Gig a month – that can’t be just for home use and is really abusing the network in my eyes.
My brother in law is with Plus.net and had to upgrade to the “teleworker” option so he could use his work’s VPN. The work pays the extra £5 per month, but it’s worth noting that the T&C’s don’t allow business use on the 21.99 premier account – including just accessing your works network. I’m not sure I like the idea of a static IP address, but that’s a minor issue. It’s excellent if you want to run your own mail or web server.
This sounds to good to be true. I’m using Demon at the moment and as mentioned, yes they are a sound provider. I have only had one network outage in 18 months service and that was only for about three hours. I have been looking at upgrading to a faster package but it seems that demon have no intention of offering free upgrades on connection speed like so many other providers are offering. at £24.99 a month, this now seems a bit stupid as all of the discussions about capping dont really apply to most people who simply browse the web, download a couple of mp3 etc. 20Gb is a lot of data if you are one of these ‘casual’ users. By the way, does anyone know if Plus.net supports Mac and if the kids can still use their Xbox Live account with them?
Yep – mac and Xbox live both work – just the same as any other provider – plug in a router and you can use any network device.
Thanks for the info Ian D. I have to agree with Rikki Dee though, Demon have been a good provider but I think they are now falling behind the other competitors. I think I will email them to ask what their short term plans are for upgrades to 2MB line and if I get any responce, I will post a quick line here. As it stands, I think I will simply transfer my ADSL to Plus.net, sit back and feel the force 🙂
No probs – the upgrades to 2Meg are scheduled to start 11th April (last I heard) and should be complete by end of June. No firm dates on 8Meg trials for rest of country apart from the 12 exchanges already announced. Hopefully by July/August we’ll see a lot more exchanges capable of those speeds.
One thing though, I cant find any info on the Plus.net site which confirms the £21.99 per month for 2Mb speed only £39.99 on the premier option or £14.99 on lite option with a 1GB cap (I asume this is per month). Any idea when this offer will become valid?
I think the website won’t show those prices until April – probably best to hang fire on changing until you can actually order it.
OK thanks for the info