I would of thought PN chris would of posted back this morning about his peak time tests. I doesn't inspire me to go to plusnet for my fibre.

Maybe I was right in that, chris is using a inhouse connection that won't have the same restrictions as a domestic customer's fibre service.

Did some searching about plusnet vs BT fibre last night and mixed results. MSE says that Plusnets traffic management is strong but not on BT. Scroll down and click full MSE review.

Tech specs
Plusnet Fibre was available to 15% of the UK when it launched in Apr 2011, but is set to be available to two-thirds of UK premises by 2015. You'll need a BT or Plusnet-based landline to get Plusnet Fibre. Same for BT http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-broadband

Price: £23.05/month or £19.55/monthSpeed: Check online (do not use link to sign up)Download limit: 250GB or 40GBContract length: 18 monthsModem/connection included? No, £55Migration fee for switchers? NoTech support phone costs? FreeTraffic shaping: Yes, strong

Another link to reviews.
http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/forum/1579

Personally I wont touch Plusnet with a barge pole. Was a customer for about 18 months, had a few problems regarding the service going down, billing mistakes, lost referals, millions of lost customers emails, getting spammed 3 years after I left them using mail addresses that had only appeared on their webmail platform for 24 hours and were unused due to them holding on to all old mailboxes and not securing their mail system against comprimise......the list goes on. They might be better since they were bought out by BT.

I was with Virgin for a number of years and I had a very good time with them - but I never had to deal with them and I never had speed capacity issues.
If you can find out what your area is like and there are not lots or reports of overloaded UBRs I'd recommend them in a heartbeat, but if you find reports of packet loss problems or slow speeds I'd stay away.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18...


Then this. http://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity/Just-joined-i...

just switched over from plusnet fibre to BT infinity unlimited fibre, on plusnet id get good dowload speeds sometimes 4mb, first test on infinity tonight and its awful, max 162kbs most of the time its steady at 10kbs, please someone tell me this isnt what ive got to look forward to !!!! plusnet was great, just capped to 120gb per month... hence why i left...

Anyone on here that has jumped from plusnet fibre to BT infinity? Let us know if it's worse or better than PN.

Back later.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 22:11:08)

I'm not sure how many times you want Plusnet's traffic management explained to you, everyone has been pretty up-front about it. Chris said he was using Plusnet Extra fibre, not an "in-house" connection. I believe him. I am sure that the satisfied Plusnet fibre customers who have posted here outnumber the unhappy ones and it's generally unhappy customers that post in forums in the first place.

Incidentally I would take issue with MSE's "Yes, strong" rating for the traffic shaping, especially compared to BT's "Yes, at peak times" rating. And just look at the comparative customer service ratings!

Edited by kasg (Tue 13-Nov-12 18:05:31)

You might find these two pages useful.

Upload speed capping . But! That page clearly needs its Key updating as it obviously hasn't been changed from the days when 40/2 as the only product.

Abnormal load occurrences. Note that Plan A is the normal, and specifically says the rate limit is not necessarily fully applied - with more information.

Contrast with the total lack of any detail from BT for any situation, and the posts you are seeing about upstream.

Chris - please see the paragraph and link about the upload speed capping in my post just now. (PM'ing as well).

That was using a normal residential Fibre Extra connection at my home.

Ok thanks. Did you get a screen grab of the other tests you said you would do last night?

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 21:27:56)

Kev I don't need it explained and chris has now confirmed it, was his home PN fibre. Juts need screen grabs from last night now.

When I am looking to buy something or pay for a service, I like to go into as much detail as I can. I also like to see real tests and read good or bad reviews from customers. I don't just buy something because one or two people say it's good.

I posted before, good and bad on what I found out about plusnet. That last one I posted is saying that Plusnet was faster than BT.

If I am going to commit to an 18 month contract with BT or Plusnet, I want to make sure I buy the right product. That is what thinkbroadband is all about.

I am also waiting for a few others who said they would do a P2P test for me in a few weeks. Need to wait for connection to PN fibre.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 21:41:42)

If they cap download why not the upload? Thats great but don't make sense.

I posted about BT on the BT forum, what my findings were but still in the dark.

Are you saying it is untrue?

In reply to a post by superspeed:

I would of thought PN chris would of posted back this morning about his peak time tests. I doesn't inspire me to go to plusnet for my fibre.

Maybe I was right in that, chris is using a inhouse connection that won't have the same restrictions as a domestic customer's fibre service.

I see Chris has answered back anyway, but I have to question your questioning!

What on earth would be the point in Chris posting (very publicly) some speed tests that were only achievable by Plusnet employees, but do so labelling them as "Plusnet Extra Fibre"? It would *guarantee* howls of complaint.

It's OK for you to ask for help & information, but try not to nitpick when you get given something!

Did some searching about plusnet vs BT fibre last night and mixed results. MSE says that Plusnets traffic management is strong but not on BT.

That is one to take up with MSE. Plusnet's traffic management used to be harsher on Extra Fibre, and is now barely there. Value fibre used to be even harsher, and is now barely there either. The changes have been relatively recent - but frankly you didn't actually notice the limitations.

Anyway, I suspect that MSE's rating is based on old information.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18...

And from this one you quote someone who must have left Plusnet over 6 or 7 years ago, before BT were the owners. I'm not sure how this is going to be relevant to your experience over the next 12 months.

The problem is that you will find *many* people who complain about their ISP, because there have been problems - both real & imagined. The loudest, most vitriolic complainers are not necessarily the best indicators of service to *any* organisation. Its the ones who produce the best evidence to backup their position that I'd pay attention to - not the volume of the vitriol.

http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/forum/1579

When I go to that link, I see someone complaining about the WiFi performance of their router in a 3 storey house.

In fact there is a lot of noise in the PN forums about whether the (cheap) router supplied is capable of supporting 80Mbps over WiFi. I have to say that, knowing WiFi as I do, I would not be relying on any cheap router to provide *fast* WiFi spread throughout a many-storey property. I'd be contemplating a much better solution (that was undoubtedly more costly). Here too the issue is whether people have the right expectations of the product.

There isn't much need to look at any others, really. The question is not what problems are around, or what vitriol can be found, or what loud complainers can be seen to utter nonsense when their expectations are out of whack. The stuff that matters is whether there are the "right number" of problems (ie not too many, for the number of customers), and whether they get solved reasonably quickly.

PN make mistakes (usually because Openreach are making the mistakes on their behalf). But they have a good team of people populating the forums whose job is to sort out the problems. There are also a lot of PN customers on the same forums, helping other customers.