Upgrade to Unlimited

Quick questions around the new unlimited.

My parents are on a market 1 exchange currently on plusnet extra for £17.99 pm for 60GB. Given it is Xmas and a few other things they have 8GB left to last till 12/1 - they are gonna have to control themselves!

But, I notice the new unlimited on 12 month contract is £16.99. So, a few questions:

1) Is there anyway they can upgrade part way through the month to get the extra bandwidth to avoid them having to pay to get a few extra gigs to tide them over?
2) What happens at the end of the 12 months? Does it go up by £2.50? Does a new 12 month contract start? Or does it revert to the old short notice termination at the £16.99 price?
3) It says it is "2Mb". They currently get 4.5Mb on ADSL1 (20CN exchange). I assume the 2Mb is a notional/advertising rate for the line and it will continue to connect at whatever it can?

Thanks

1) No. (Frequently stated by the reps so definitely correct).

2) The price does not go up and yes it reverts to short notice. Whether or not that is still 10 days, or whether it is a full month hasn't been asked so far as I know. Probably not really a deal-breaker .

3) Yes, it will continue at the same speed as now.

Hi Bob, as ever a very helpful response.

Bit of a shame on 1 but it was what the site said - just hoped there was a way the nice people at plusnet might be able to change it - thing is they normally get nowhere near 60GB (largest previous month was 30GB) but with my brother getting some games for Xmas that had large downloads (one was 20GB) plus them using iPlayer a bit more over the last week they are getting perilously close.

Good news on 2 and 3 though. Think I will advise them tomorrow to upgrade so that they not only get it cheaper but don't have to worry about limits again.

And am strongly considering plusnet fibre when BT finally release my cabinet (exchange is accepting orders and cab was fibred a few months back with I think all work complete but can't yet order). Was with plusnet years ago and only moved on for ADSL2+ - but the prices for unlimited fibre are just too tempting.

You probably know, but just in case you don't, they/you can log into their account and put the upgrade in through the Member Centre immediately. It just doesn't take effect until the next billing date. (12 Jan?). Safer than waiting and forgetting.

Sorry, yes - thanks Bob. I will be seeing them tomorrow so if they are happy with the 1 year contract I will put the upgrade in then. It was only by going in and doing a dummy run this morning that I clicked that unlimited is actually cheaper than their current package - plusnet's pricing is a little murky in most places for M1 exchanges and always takes me a little while to work out...

Hi Bob, Quick question in relation to the one asked by the OP. I'm on 'Extra' at the moment, with an uncapped u/s of 888 (uncapped at my request earlier this year). I move to Unlimited on 1/1/13. Do you know if the u/s speed will drop back to 448 when I switch, meaning I'll need to request the removal of the cap again, or will the uncapped 888 carry forward?

Also, I have a static IP at the moment, I'm assuming that will carry forward (not worried if it's a different static IP, just needs to be static!).

Thanks

Andrew

Upload speed shouldn't change although there have been a few reports where it has but nobody knows why - I think that there is a problem raised on it
Static IP should also carry on a normal - mine did

Edited by deleted (Fri 28-Dec-12 21:13:32)

As Oldjim says, and adding re the static IP address that if that does get lost, which it shouldn't, they have said a few times they will reinstate one with no trouble or cost.

Hi Ian,

I think most packages are the same whereby you can set a limit on the amount extra to spend once the allowance is breached. £5 per 5GB is the going rate I think. You could however set this to zero so as not to spend any extra cash, and when the limit is reached the speed will be capped at 256 Kbps, not great, but will still allow general surfing / emails etc without much of a problem, although some services are blocked (binary usenet, p2p and external FTP).

This URL on the help site explains things pretty well.

Mike.

Hi Mike. Yes, I have it set to 0 extra but that 256Kb won't do them much good - but at least we can control how much extra it costs. Just a shame you can't upgrade to what is a cheaper product mid month - but I guess it is because they decided to program their systems to stop this from happening.

It wasn't a case of programming to stop it happening.
They did have a period where they were trialling it and it screwed up the systems as everything is interlinked - sorting it came into the "too difficult category"

Hi All

I was on an old legacy Premier Option 1 and recently upgraded to Extra and that reduced my costs as my exchanage is Market 2 i.e. treated like Market 3 for pricing/billing purposes. Also the traffic pattern and types of traffic control improved with this upgrade

Now having seen the "Unlimited" offer that will cut the cost even that bit more is it a no brainer to now upgrade from Extra to Unlimited as it looks to me like the only difference betwen Extra and Unlimited is the removal of the 60GB limit during the hours 8am to midnight with the traffic handling being the same................................or are the any stated or possible future traps or issues that such a move to Unlimited is not good for all users???

TIA for any insight

In reply to a post by Routefinder:

Now having seen the "Unlimited" offer that will cut the cost even that bit more is it a no brainer to now upgrade from Extra to Unlimited as it looks to me like the only difference betwen Extra and Unlimited is the removal of the 60GB limit during the hours 8am to midnight with the traffic handling being the same ....

The 8pm to 10pm throttling of P2P etc. is also removed from Unlimited. Traffic prioritisation for things like gaming and VOIP is the same, as you say.

Many thanks for the feedback

The one thing that I have noticed is ref hereabouts to loss of the static IP when doing this upgrade........this did not happen when going from Premier Option 1 to Extra. So not a welcome 'problem', is it ???

Apparently it has been mentioned as happening occasionally, but not normally. Plenty of reports of no loss.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 29-Dec-12 16:48:33)

Thanks Bob - The switch over went OK earlier this morning. I kept my uncapped u/s connection and they turned off interleave in the process, so I now get just over 1K upstream . Moving the static IP over wasn't as successful, the connection did revert to Dynamic IP, but the CSC Team are on the case and will re-instate within the next couple of days (at no cost). It's no great trouble in the short term.

Andrew

Hi there,

Sorry to hear that, if you could post the ticket ID we'll take a look for you and get it sorted? Realise the CSC have it in hand but it'd be good to check your account and see what happened there if it's alright with yourself?

Thanks Matthew, it's 63925787.

Andrew