Plusnet’s announcement was a damp squib. They brought in a sustainable usage policy. If this had meant maximum usage from your account until a certain limit was met then fine, especially as I was no where near there cap limits. However the caps and punishments were on top of the shaping applied to my account. All week Usenet has been dog slow.
So I voted with my feet, grabbed my MAC code this afternoon and filled in the form at F2S. Hopefully be on at least the same speeds but uncapped in a couple of weeks. With some luck I may even be migrated to 8Meg as my exchange is one of the lucky few. Fingers crossed. I’ve also made sure I’m on a monthly account just in case there are more issues with F2S than I can currently see. At least they seem to communicate more efficiently than Plusnet. Even today when I phoned to get my MAC key they said there were no issues with shaping at their end and what I was seeing was limited to me – the forums are awash with Usenet issues at the moment. Head in the sand I fear which is a shame as the support from Plusnet was generally excellent.
I admire your decisiveness but I do suspect that all ISPs are in the same boat. Demand is far outstripping their purchased bandwidth (Demon’s switch to 2mbps is causing no end of problems) and I doubt BT are willing or able to provide more. But, as I’ve wrote many times on my blog and as you’ve said as well, customer support and communication is absymal throughout the industry and the real key behind my anger. If something’s broke tell us why and when it’ll be fixed. Dont ignore or treat your customers as thick (many are but not all of us). Plusnet telling you it’s an individual problem is exactly what Demon are saying about their current speed issues. It’s blatant lies.
As my BT line is now officially second-class (1mbps maximum) I’ve given up caring. What on earth would you use 24mbps for? The mind boggles at that speed.
Totally agree and I’m not epecting to see better performance in the long run. However I couldn’t keep getting so frustrated with PlusNet and hand over my cash at the same time. There comms which was so good last year has gone downhill – so many own goals this year that even Terry Butcher would be blushing.
It could be worse of course: you could be with Bulldog!
Going back to the what would I use 24mbps (and at leats 1 mbps upload)….VOIP, TV via internet, movies on demand, gaming, video messaging. Also, I could do more of these at once rather than one at a time i.e. downloading a movie using 10mbps of the stream while I get some new podcasts with another chunk leaving enough to browse, use VOIP and game over Live. Easy.