Calls to Residential Customer Support are often lengthy, and at busy times involve waiting for an agent to become available. Whilst calls to the 0845 number have been free at all times to customers of Plusnet's Talk home phone service this was not necessarily the case for users with other phone service providers. In the latter case call costs could be significant. Great news!  From 2nd August 2011 Residential Customer Support moved to Freephone 0800.

Users needing to contact Residential Customer Support can now call 0800 432 0200 at no cost when calling from a UK land-line. Unfortunately those using mobiles (or other networks) will still be charged. However, these users are not forgotten. Plusnet have announced they are taking steps to acquire an 03 number; calls to this will be deducted from inclusive minutes on mobile phone plans - or be charged at UK land-line rates.

Business customers will continue to call 0114 296 5182 for Business Customer Support.

The long awaited launch of Plusnet fibre products took place this morning (19 Apr 2011) heralded by a flight of pigeons racing from London to their home loft in Yorkshire. See Plusnet Fibre Pigeon Race - The Results.

The new products Value Fibre and Extra Fibre come alongside a refresh of the product range (see FAQs) which PUG are pleased to see reflects feedback from users provided through the forums. Essentially the existing Value and Extra base products continue, with unchanged pricing and bandwidth limits. Pro is discontinued as a stand-alone product and replaced by a £5 per month Pro add-on available on both Value and Extra. This is great news - it provides a choice of two products with Pro speed profiles (line speed) whilst retaining the base product's bandwidth.

• With Value the Pro add-on effectively provides the long-requested Pro-Lite product with Pro speed profiles at an entry level price.
• With Extra the add-on provides the Pro experience with 3 times the bandwidth of the stand-alone Pro product but at the same price.

Fibre comes as a second add-on costing £10 per month but requiring an 18-month contract (reflecting commitments Plusnet have to enter into with BT Wholesale). Set-up charges might also be incurred - see Fibre FAQs. Download speeds for most users are expected to exceed 30Mbps, though this depends on distance from the cabinet. Upload speeds will be capped at 2Mbps.

Value Fibre comes with 40GB peak-time (8am to midnight) bandwidth, Extra Fibre with 120GB. Off-peak usage continues to be free.

The Pro add-on may also be added with Fibre, again retaining the underlying product's bandwidth.

Together these two base products and add-ons provide 8 combinations with the following price points.

Product	Price		Bandwidth
	Market 1 & 2	Market 3
Value	£12.99	£ 6.49	10GB
Value Pro	£17.99	£11.49	10GB
Value Fibre	£22.99	£16.49	40GB
Value Fibre Pro	£27.99	£21.49	40GB
Extra	£17.99	£11.49	60GB
Extra Pro	£22.99	£16.49	60GB
Extra Fibre	£27.99	£21.49	120GB
Extra Fibre Pro	£32.99	£26.49	120GB

With all products extra bandwidth will be charged at £5 per 5GB.

Expected speeds for the new products and add-ons are given on the Plusnet website here - click the product names to expose this information. Note that for fibre products traffic shaping extends an hour into off-peak hours. PUG's Product Comparison Tool requires significant updating to accommodate the new product set and this is in progress.

Alongside the residential product changes due tomorrow (19 Apr 2011) Plusnet have announced (ADSL2+ and Annex M come to Plusnet Business) that ADSL2+ will, for the first time, be offered on Business products. No changes are planned to the core Business Option 1, 2 and 3 base products but new sign-ups will be provisioned on ADSL2+ where estimates show improved connection speeds should result. This is, of course, subject to their exchange being 21CN/ADSL2+ ready. Upload speeds will be uncapped as standard offering up to 1Mbps upload speeds.

On each option three additional services will be available, Enhanced Care, Prioritised Service and (new to Plusnet) Annex M.

The current Enhanced Care service will continue. This option costs £8.50 (ex VAT) per month and details can be found here.

Prioritised Service is currently known as Max Premium, the name change reflecting its extension to ADSL2+. This service is standard with Option 3 but costs £7.00 (ex VAT) per month with Options 1 and 2. Details can be found here. For all users this option provides a prioritised service across the BT Wholesale network. For 20CN "up to 8Mbps" maxDSL users upload speeds are increased from up to 448kbps to up to 832kbps; 21CN "up to 20Mbps" ADSL2+ users will be be provisioned with up to 1Mbps upload as standard.

The new Annex M service (available in ADSL2+ exchanges with Annex M enabled) will enable users to potentially achieve up to 2.5Mbps upstream by sacrificing some of their available downstream bandwidth. Clearly this is targeted at businesses where upstream speeds are a key business driver. This service will cost £10.00 (ex VAT) per month. A FAQ is expected to be published alongside the launch.

Though initially targeted at new sign-ups existing users are not forgotten. The rolling programme of bulk residential upgrades (Faster Plusnet Broadband, for free) is being extended to include Business users. Plusnet have assured users they will be directly consulted before their services are migrated.

Many Plusnet customers will know of Douglas Clark (dgdclynx) who was an erudite poster on both the Community forums and here, as well as a regular in many usenet forums.

Unfortunately, Douglas has been ill for some time and sadly, after a brief period in hospital, he passed away on Tuesday July 20th.

A statistician by trade, Douglas was a keen reader and writer of poetry and had published a number of works over the years. He also had eclectic musical tastes ranging from choral singers to Bruce Springsteen to the Dixie Chicks, and an equally wide-ranging interest in films from costume dramas to fantasy epics.

Douglas was a keen contributer to PUG, particularly keeping Plusnet on their toes with respect to webstats. He will be sadly missed.

Douglas' sites

Facebook

MySpace

Wikipedia

Home page

This morning (15th April) Plusnet introduced its new product set with Extra replacing Premium and Market 3 pricing becoming available on Pro. Extra offers 60GB bandwidth compared with Premium's 80GB but prices are reduced to compensate. Expected speeds and traffic prioritisation are identical.

The new product set can be summarised as follows:

Product	Data	Speed	Quality	Price
				Market 1 & 2	Market 3
Value	10GB	ADSL 1 *	Good	£12.99	£ 6.49
Extra	60GB	ADSL2+	Better	£17.99	£11.49
Pro	20GB	ADSL2+	Best	£22.99	£16.49

NOTES:

Data:

This is the allowed bandwidth of data (both download and upload) that can be used per month between the hours of 8am and midnight. Overnight all usage is always free on all these products (ie doesn't count against the data allowance).

Speed:

ADSL 1   = up to 8Mb/s service
ADSL 2+ = up to 20Mb/s service (where available)

* Value now also offers ADSL2+

Quality:

Being a shared service, this relates to the priority various traffic is given on the network during peak times (browsing, streaming, emails and VoIP will always be "best" on all packages). See below for details of PUG's Comparison Tool which helps to quantify product performance under this heading.

Market areas:

Market areas for each exchange were defined in a statement by Ofcom in May 2008. Some 70% of UK premises fall into low-cost Market 3 areas. Use the Usertools Exchange Checker to find out the Market area your exchange is in.

Comparison Tool

Tables such as that shown above make it relatively easy to choose a product based on data transfer and price but choosing a product based on expected speeds and prioritisation (or quality) is more difficult. To help you select the Plusnet broadband package that best fits headline requirements and your usage pattern, the popular PUG Comparison Tool has been substantially updated to include data for the new product and to widen the range of reported information.

You will find the tool here.

Useful links:

Plusnet to offer something Extra
Changes to Plusnet Additional Usage Charges

Around 4 months ago Plusnet Comms (now known as Digital Care) representative James Bailey departed Plusnet for pastures new. Community Site regulars will be familiar with James and back in November many were sad to see him go.

Well, after a short stint away at the Sheffield offices of WANdisco, James returned this week, albeit in a new guise. Yes, his official job title is now "New Recruits and Advisor Graduation Lead" - if you can get your tongue around that one! As we understand it, this new role is more inwards facing working with Plusnet's new recruits so we don't expect James to be as visible as many may hope.

A warm welcome back to Mr Bailey from all in the Plusnet UserGroup. We are sure your new role will prove challenging but hope you can find the time every now and then to stick your head into the forums.