Unlimited Cheaper than 10Gb...!!

Having just done some basic arithmetic I have just worked out that, over 18 months, unlimited internet is £18 cheaper than a 10Gb a month restriction.

Apparently is is called "marketing" but is to me the sort of practice that simply annoys customers still on old agreements.

I only really want perhaps 15Gb a couple of months a year but the temptation is to go unlimited and use everything I can!

Is this the law of unintended consequences or just daft pricing?

Meldrew
(who bought his wife an iPad for Xmas!)

Is that Fibre of ADSLx? Low rate area or high rate? With or without Plusnet line rental? Basic prices or inclusive of a deal. Cashback involved or not?

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 30-Jan-14 18:09:32)

I bet as the wife installs more apps on the iPad that usage will climb in time.

Personally I'd love to see the end of the not much cheaper (if they are) packages with allowances. They only make sense when the unlimited products cost a fortune e.g. mobile broadband

ADSL Market 3

Sorry, I'd realised it had to be ADSLx, and now also that you are an existing customer, but what about the line rental?

It's even madder at 12 months of course. At 24 months they level peg. Plusnet well after after that, and I expect churn is very low.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

With or without Plusnet line rental? Basic prices or inclusive of a deal.

Seeing that only Unlimited Broadband and Calls has a deal on at the mo' and by reverse engineering, it is with line rental.

Correct the phone is included but I think i have got my arithmetic wrong! Speaking to a rep it seems that the deal is either £2.99 for six months of an 18 month contract or £2.99 for twelve months of a two year contract.

THis works out at
10Gb 18 months at £107.82 or unlimited at £134.88
10Gb 24 months at £143.76 or unlimited at £149.88

So two years is break even. I might just settle for £9.99 a month and pay the phone line up front. That then "discounts" the monthly cost down to £6.48 (not taking account loss of interest!!).

I'll see if I can get through on the phone.....

Meldrew
(whose IPad owning wife is getting very irritated!!)

I've asked before but didn't follow the answer.

If a user downloads 10GB one month and 100GB on the following month then does the ISP pay more for the 100GB or is it the speed of download that costs?

That isn't what the website says http://www.plus.net/home-broadband/
Under Here's the Legal Bit it states

Plusnet Unlimited broadband £2.50 a month for the first 12 months then £9.99 a month when you take a Plusnet home phone package and line rental � 18 month contract

Available between 19th December 2013 and 25th February 2014 to new Plusnet customers signing up from www.plus.net only for Plusnet Unlimited Broadband and a Plusnet Weekends, Anytime or Anytime International 300 home phone package plus line rental for 18 months minimum term. You must be a new customer to take advantage of this offer.

Edited by deleted (Thu 30-Jan-14 20:56:16)

My third post makes it clear I had worked that out .

Yep. There is no suggestion anywhere of a 2-year term.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

I've asked before but didn't follow the answer.

If a user downloads 10GB one month and 100GB on the following month then does the ISP pay more for the 100GB or is it the speed of download that costs?

Neither.

The ISP rents total throughput capacity at the point where the traffic is handed over to it from the BT Wholesale "Cloud". (At an MSIL, which is a bit similar to the old BT Central).

However, whereas a BT Central clogged up if the limit of its installed segments was reached, normally if the rented capacity at the MSIL is exceeded at any given time, up to something like 5% (I forget the actual figure) they are charged normally for the excess, but above 5% they pay a penal rate per Gbps.

In other words, they pay for the expected maximum amount (Gbps) going through per second, with leeway and penalty rates if they exceed it, not the number of GBs passed through in the month.

That's what has always made ISP costs (even on Centrals where per-second bit-rate charging was also effectively in place) and pricing by GB used by the customer a pig for them to reconcile.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 30-Jan-14 21:17:57)

Sorry, I'm just a serial reader.

How dare you compare yourself to the literary giant Charles Dickens!

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Yep. There is no suggestion anywhere of a 2-year term.

Indeed, and you have to be a new customer as well.

Some customers [cough] have been offered retention deals of 24 months for BB and LR+Phone

Cheaper line rental elsewhere at £11.22 with no upfront, call connection charge or tie-in, plus per second billing - No brainer.

Another half hour on the phone, two cups of tea and a bar of chocolate later its a result as they say in sporting parlance!

Initially last night spoke to customer services who gave me the official deals. This morning checked Uswitch to see what was out there and an even better deal with PN was listed. Spoke to PN again and got transferred to the better deals department. Very helpful person said the Uswitch price could be bettered too (!) and so it was. Paid line rental up front whilst over excited.

OK its for 24 months but the saving is considerable. Pay less, get more!

It really is a minefield out there and even the PN website itself bears no relation to reality - the headline prices differ from the small print version further down the page.

What a palaver!

Meldrew
(who thinks her desreves his own iPad now but not a pink one like Mrs M!)

In reply to a post by professor973:

Cheaper line rental elsewhere at £11.22 with no upfront, call connection charge or tie-in, plus per second billing - No brainer.

£5.99 per month with primus.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/home-phone-c...

Don't think so - I happen to know the ASA are onto their claim of UK lowest line rental.
http://www.primussaver.co.uk/HomePhone.aspx
Also, their Home Phone Max does not touch Zen Home Talk Plus.
http://www.zen.co.uk/home-office/voice/phone-service...
Also compare chargeable call rates - Double with Primus.
Prices in your link seem well out of date for Home Phone Saver, along with long tie-in and only via Broadband choices. Not a very honest claim for basic line rental.

Edited by professor973 (Fri 31-Jan-14 11:36:52)

Of course uSwitch price can be bettered. You will NEVER see the best deals on a comparison site, because they only list suppliers that offer them huge referral fees, which of course puts the price up.

Purely out of interest I checked your present package - according to your sig -
Phone £11.22 per month plus broadband £19.99 per month - cheapest package - total £31.12 per month
Seems a bit expensive to me

If I'm following correctly.

If ISP A has 100 million GB for 1 hour and nothing else for 23 hours compared to ISP B having 1000 million GB/day, then A, depending upon arrangements, would pay more.

If that is the case then surely it would be in the interest of BTW to get fibre installed, in a more timely fashion, to more exchanges and cabinets.

All depends on the spread of the usage on ISP B

95th percentile billing can means that a sustained peak from a sports event can cost an ISP more money if lots of users watch it online

Actually I have the Home Talk Plus package that costs a little more Old Jim, (read sig again!). BUT, it includes 5,000 free minutes which I USED this last month! Works out at 0.01p per minute - Unbeatable! - ALSO, the only company I have come across NOT to smack you with a charge for calls over 60 minutes long. Nice to be on the phone for four or five hours at a stretch without a charge. BT/PN anytime eat your heart out. SO, not expensive at all for what I get. Superb service and no tie in. It's called choice, just like any other purchase.
Possibly you may like to total up unlimited phone and BB with PN and BT on a Market one exchange, both of which I have suffered.

Edited by professor973 (Fri 31-Jan-14 12:51:57)

Only, that's a hypothetical and impossible scenario. And as explained, the rental is of maximum expected Gigabits per second, not GigaBytes actually passed through in any specific period. I haven't worked out what capacity would be needed for your two examples.

I don't see how you get from the examples to the last paragraph either. Unless you are just saying that if you have a product that sells well from a limited number of shops, and you haven't already saturated the market, it makes sense to open more shops.

The Openreach rollout has been based on commercial criteria. I.e. going first to where they think they will improve their profits most easily. Probably in consultation with one or more of their prime customers: BTW, Sky and TalkTalk.

Openreach fill-in, the BDUK programme, and other initiatives are going for most of the remainder. Openreach cannot blanket the country at current costings, and BT Wholesale can't go where Openreach haven't.

Both equate to GB/s. A is XXXX/s and B is XX/s but B over a longer period equates to more in total.

So why don't ISP's limit the speed of connections but make the usage unlimited?


100 users on ADSL can use a certain amount per second.

100 users on Fibre can use 5x more than the ADSL users, thereby saturating the connection and the ISP getting charged extra by whoever at BT group.

All hypothetical, but just getting my head around the way that ISP's are charged.

I've told you the way they are charged.

The capacity of an MSIL is 10Gbps. The early ones were 1Gbps and may still be available/in use. An ISP can have multiple MSILs at multiple locations. There are 20 such locations for WBC (ADSL2+ and FTTC) and 10 for IPStream (ADSL Max replacement).

Nobody ever talks about MSIL capacity in terms of how many GB it can handle in an hour, although as you say - the arithmetic is easy. Since when was your connection speed measured in time per GB? I accept files of known size are often download and that download is timed, but that's a different question.

Although a given MSIL is only used by one ISP, they don't have to rent the full capacity of it. That is why there is headroom if their customer demand goes over the rented amount at any given time.

A small ISP might rent 0.5Gbps at each of two locations. A large one a huge amount more. For instance we get frequent notifications from Plusnet like this:-

Subject: Increase in 20CN and 21CN Broadband Capacity - Monday 2nd December

We will shortly be increasing the capacity of our IPSC (20CN) broadband host links by a further 1340Mbps. It's these host links that we use to deliver bandwidth to customers provisioned on an 'Up to 8Mbps' 20CN product.

In addition to this we will also be increasing the capacity of our WBC (21CN) broadband host links by a further 4.3Gbps. It's these host links that we use to deliver bandwidth to the majority of customers on our 21CN and Fibre services.

We're activating this extra capacity in line with the current budget, customers' usage habits and our projected growth in customer numbers.

As for

So why don't ISP's limit the speed of connections but make the usage unlimited?

maybe you should write to a few and ask . Or look at how many people on here on ADSLx want to tweak their connection to the last 100kbps, even when over 15Mbps and using under 30GB per month.

95th percentile is the industry standard but unless things have changed aren't BTw doing 100th percentile? 100th percentile is even more evil than 95th, 95th at least allows 5% of traffic to spike without penalty, 100th allows none.

I'm pretty sure they can go 5% above rented capacity at the same rate. Above that IIRC it is tiered. I seem to remember there's also some provision that at some point they effectively get automatically contracted for higher capacity for 3 months, that being the additional rental "minimum term".

The details used to be publicly available. It looks like they are now behind a registration wall. So I can't confirm any figures.

I have been with Primus for two years now and am on £5.99 line rental.
I don't have a calls package with them - I use 18185 for calls.
Broadband via Plusnet.
Mind you I am on a Market 1 exchange so Primus cannot supply Broadband.
No problems with them so cannot comment on customer service, but seemed very efficient when I set it up.

You seem to get stroppy nowadays when people don't get what you are on about.

I appreciate, now, how it is charged for.

What's a MSIL.

I couldn't make it any clearer so I'll give up.

MSIL, here you are:- http://ipsite.org/1tl8

Sorry. I've been under a bit of strain the last few days. Not your fault.

Post deleted by RobertoS (it was duplicated).

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 01-Feb-14 18:26:08)

i am on a market 1 exchange and Primus can supply BB here. They were knocking last weekend.

Primus told me they could not supply me BB (LLU only).
Maybe things have changed?

An exchange can be unbundled and still be market 1. It is also still possible to keep your BT line with SMPF. I find you need to take what Primus say with a pinch of salt. As I said earlier, they were door knocking here last week making all sorts of wild claims about speed etc.

I take what *any* ISP says with a pinch of salt!
My point was that I do take line rental from them at £5.99 p.m. (which you seemed to be implying wasn't available in:

In reply to a post by professor973:

Don't think so - I happen to know the ASA are onto their claim of UK lowest line rental.
http://www.primussaver.co.uk/HomePhone.aspx
Also, their Home Phone Max does not touch Zen Home Talk Plus.
http://www.zen.co.uk/home-office/voice/phone-service...
Also compare chargeable call rates - Double with Primus.
Prices in your link seem well out of date for Home Phone Saver, along with long tie-in and only via Broadband choices. Not a very honest claim for basic line rental.

Of course you need an ISP who will sell BB only to take advantage of that and if you are on an exchange that is LLU I don't know if Primus will offer what truly seems to be the cheapest UK line rental available.

I was not disputing that. I was disputing the cheapest line rental claim. the £5.99 is tied to a long tie-in and specifically via a specific referral site some time ago, Not on general offer on the site where the cheapest UK line offer claim is made. I am not talking legacy deals.

Up to last September I was paying Primus £8.90 p.m. I called their CS to find out if I could move my BB to them - which wasn't possible as mentioned above - but in the process they volunteered to put me on the £5.99 p.m deal in return for signing up for a year. N.B. This is paid monthly not an annual lump sum up front (which is the only way you get any sort of discount from most providers).

So I am not talking legacy deals or long tie-in, but I give you that you might have to call them to get a good deal.
I understand where you are coming from now you have qualified your initial statements to say that the offer is

Not on general offer on the site

.
I don't have a problem with that and to me the saving is worth a (free) phone call plus I am happy to use 18185 to get free calls (except for 5p connection charge) to UK geographic numbers + cheap international.

It can be found online > http://ipsite.org/1tls ,still seems to be advertised at £5.99 a month.

Appreciated. Have a week off!

In reply to a post by professor973:

Don't think so - I happen to know the ASA are onto their claim of UK lowest line rental.
http://www.primussaver.co.uk/HomePhone.aspx
Also, their Home Phone Max does not touch Zen Home Talk Plus.
http://www.zen.co.uk/home-office/voice/phone-service...
Also compare chargeable call rates - Double with Primus.
Prices in your link seem well out of date for Home Phone Saver, along with long tie-in and only via Broadband choices. Not a very honest claim for basic line rental.

http://www.primussaver.co.uk/agent/hpc01/line-rental...

You may not have a problem with it, but the ASA find a problem with the lowest UK line rental claim.

Your Complaint - New Call Telecoms Ltd/ Primus Saver



Thank you for contacting the Advertising Standards Authority.



I can confirm that we intend to pursue your complaint further, and will be in touch in due course.



Can you also please confirm that you or not a competitor to the advertiser in question? It is important that we ascertain this, as we have a different approach to handling competitor complaints from the usual procedure. Advertisers making a complaint about their competitor are required to try to resolve it with them directly in the first instance.



Our effectiveness depends on resolving matters fairly and swiftly. I�d appreciate it if you could confirm the above to me by Monday 17th if possible, so we can continue with your complaint.



Kind regards



Anthony McGarry

Complaints Executive

Direct line 020 7492 2185



Advertising Standards Authority

Mid City Place, 71 High Holborn

London WC1V 6QT

Telephone 020 7492 2222

Apparently is is called "marketing" but is to me the sort of practice that simply annoys customers still on old agreements.

Hi there,

Whilst our offers for new customers differ to the options available for account changes available via our website for existing customers. I'd still advise having a chat with our customer options team to see what they can do for you.

I can confirm that we intend to pursue your complaint further, and will be in touch in due course.

It will be interesting to hear if they substantiate the claim and on what basis since Primus do in fact offer the lowest UK line rental. If anybody knows a lower please let me know - I couldn't find one and I looked quite hard.

It depends - using Line Rental Saver from Plusnet it is £1 per month cheaper but that doesn't include evening and weekend calls

In reply to a post by mbeenham:

I can confirm that we intend to pursue your complaint further, and will be in touch in due course.

It will be interesting to hear if they substantiate the claim and on what basis since Primus do in fact offer the lowest UK line rental. If anybody knows a lower please let me know - I couldn't find one and I looked quite hard.

This is what they are following up - The claim to the cheapest UK line rental, which is not as cheap as Zen's £11.22 - No tie-in, no upfront payment to get it, and no special behind the door deal.
http://www.primussaver.co.uk/HomePhone.aspx

Edited by professor973 (Fri 14-Feb-14 12:32:35)

Interesting - I wonder if the fact that the Primus product includes evening and weekend calls and Zen doesn't will affect the result

In reply to a post by Oldjim:

Interesting - I wonder if the fact that the Primus product includes evening and weekend calls and Zen doesn't will affect the result

Shouldn't do, since Primus aren't saying "cheapest line rental + evening calls" provider.

Do we really need the multi-line spacing all the way through that? To me it hugely lowers its readability, especially allied to the unnecessary emboldenment.

possibly not, but that's the trouble with copy and paste. Though it has the benefit of being something for you to have a pop at!

Time will tell, but they have taken a look and feel they should take it further, though we all know suppliers will push claims and prices to the limit, with Market 1 prices hidden in the small print!

Pop++

lol ++++

Not a "pop" at all . It is possible and permissible to edit for layout purposes a copy and paste without it being an alteration as such . Purely for future reference of course .

That's not right. I am on Primus line rental saver at £5.99 monthly.

* No up front payment
* Annual contract
* No calls bundled

I'm pretty certain it IS the cheapest *LINE RENTAL* available in the UK, so I would be very surprised if the ASA found any substance in a complaint. Seems to be a straightforward, honest claim.

You'd have to stay with Zen for 88 months in order for it to be cheaper, looking at the current Primus webpage being complained about.

Edit: maths, doh.

Edited by deleted (Sat 15-Feb-14 08:23:30)

In reply to a post by mbeenham:

That's not right. I am on Primus line rental saver at £5.99 monthly.
...
I'm pretty certain it IS the cheapest *LINE RENTAL* available in the UK, so I would be very surprised if the ASA found any substance in a complaint. Seems to be a straightforward, honest claim.

I would imagine the claim as made today would have to refer to the current cheapest product for sale and not the cheapest product which used to be for sale.

For phone line only it appears to be available as a Line Rental Saver "Special Offer" with a 12 month contract from this website, don't see any info on how long the "SO" will be available for.

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

For phone line only it appears to be available as a Line Rental Saver "Special Offer" with a 12 month contract from this website, don't see any info on how long the "SO" will be available for.

I still think the "cheapest line rental" claim should only be used on the page with the "cheapest line rental" displayed. That offer above appears only available via a comparison service and not by clicking links on the normal Primus pages.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

For phone line only it appears to be available as a Line Rental Saver "Special Offer" with a 12 month contract from this website, don't see any info on how long the "SO" will be available for.

I still think the "cheapest line rental" claim should only be used on the page with the "cheapest line rental" displayed. That offer above appears only available via a comparison service and not by clicking links on the normal Primus pages.

Yes I agree, the claim isn't to be scene on the bbch website despite the basic line rental being so cheap.

In reply to a post by Oldjim:

Interesting - I wonder if the fact that the Primus product includes evening and weekend calls and Zen doesn't will affect the result

No need to wonder.
" Further to my letter of 5 March 2014, we have now received response from New Call Telecoms Ltd. They have provided written assurance that the claim will be removed from all relevant pages of the website. We consider this will resolve the complaint without referring the matter to the ASA Council and will consequently be closing the file.
Yours Sincerely.
Fay Wiles. Investigations Executive."