Considering switching to Plusnet

Hi all,

I've been with O2 for some years now, but have decided I don't want to fall into the black hole that is Sky, now that they have taken over the O2 broadband. I have literally had no problems with O2 for the past 4-5 years, except a brief period of disconnects due to a neighbour's faulty Skybox blasting radiowaves up and down the street late last year, now resolved.

I'm seriously considering PlusNet, since I want a monthly rolling service, I want to keep BT for landline, and want unlimited broadband (no need for fibre as yet), and the ability to use my own router.

My internet usage consists of standard web browsing, youtube and iplayer video streaming, the occasional Skype video chat (once a week or so), and gaming. I need a service that provides consistent download speeds for video streaming, Steam game patches and game purchase downloads once in every 6 months, and good pings for multiplayer gaming.

How is PlusNet for these things, and if there are any people here who have switched over from O2, how does the PlusNet service compare to O2?

Thanks so much for any help and advice,

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-Jun-13 20:59:07)

I'm thinking of going over to PN too (from 02) but I just read certain exchanges might be over-subscribed so there might be slow-downs.

That's really put me off

That might be the fibre side of things?

In reply to a post by LucBorg:

That might be the fibre side of things?

Possibly.

And hopefully a PN advisor could clarify this.

In reply to a post by Conrad3000:

I'm thinking of going over to PN too (from 02) but I just read certain exchanges might be over-subscribed so there might be slow-downs.

That's really put me off

If that is where I replied to you not long ago, as I said there - you misunderstood something . That isn't what was said.

If you've read it elsewhere, can you give us a link to see who is saying what?

The PlusNet system is completely different from O2/Be regarding how exchanges are handled. The network between the user and the exchange is BT Wholesale and the capacity at the exchange is these days normally plenty. Unlike O2/Be where over the last few years they seem to have got into a right mess during their "new network" rollout and lack of other upgrades during it.

If congestion were to occur on PlusNet it would be around the handover points from BT Wholesale into the PlusNet in-house systems, and as was said by a PlusNet rep in the other thread there shouldn't be any such problem at the moment.

I was an O2 user for years and now have been on PlusNet Fibre Unlimited for just under 1 month, my experience thus far:

- Browsing, no different than O2
- Gaming, my latency is better with Plusnet by roughly 5-10ms.
- P2P, definitely see the prioritization at work as the speeds fluctuate like a yo-yo

overall, good value.

If an exchange were over-subscribed it would also affect BT Retail's Infinity users and all other ISPs using the BT Wholesale service. It would be sorted pretty quickly!

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by Conrad3000:

I'm thinking of going over to PN too (from 02) but I just read certain exchanges might be over-subscribed so there might be slow-downs.

That's really put me off

If that is where I replied to you not long ago, as I said there - you misunderstood something . That isn't what was said.

If you've read it elsewhere, can you give us a link to see who is saying what?

The PlusNet system is completely different from O2/Be regarding how exchanges are handled. The network between the user and the exchange is BT Wholesale and the capacity at the exchange is these days normally plenty. Unlike O2/Be where over the last few years they seem to have got into a right mess during their "new network" rollout and lack of other upgrades during it.

If congestion were to occur on PlusNet it would be around the handover points from BT Wholesale into the PlusNet in-house systems, and as was said by a PlusNet rep in the other thread there shouldn't be any such problem at the moment.

You're right; must have been my misunderstanding

Plusnet set a line profile as well as the one set by BTW - the Plusnet one is supposed to follow the BTW profile upwards automatically - but it frequently fails and you're left stuck with a low PN profile and thus much lower speeds than BTW has set for your line.

Masses of posts about this on the PN Forums, but they seem unable to do anything about it.

Yes, but that is a different issue again, and one on which I have made a fair few posts.