Phoned to enquire and asked about the increased upload, rep said other ISP's were capping the upload which plusnet didn't do?

I then asked about upgrades should i decide I wanted the full 80. No charge to upgrade just the revised +£5 monthly fee. He said there was no setup fee for that because plusnet would just remove the cap they set.

Kind of contradicted the first answer about upload, but hey. I'll give it a try and submit a speedtest once I'm live next week.

In reply to a post by armistice:

Phoned to enquire and asked about the increased upload, rep said other ISP's were capping the upload which plusnet didn't do?

This suggests to me that Plusnet place all FTTC orders to Openreach as 80/20 and then have been limiting to 40/10 their side to provide a 40/10 service. If that's the case, then the rep doesn't appear to entirely know the full picture regarding other ISPs capping upload as that may not be what other ISPs do. Other ISPs can/may order a true 40/10 FTTC product with Openreach, thus no limiting their side is required.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Jun-14 14:38:30)

no it just means a sales rep didnt explain it right.

basically the old 40/10 service and other isps who sell 40/10 order 40./10 from openreach which is sync speed capped, not sure why you struggling to accept this.

Plusnet even put some 80/20 customers on 40/10 when the speed estimate is around 40 or below (without telling them).

In reply to a post by adslmax:

I find it rather strange too. As for unlimited fibre 80/20 was £22.49 but 40/20 was £17.49 so I think Plusnet are no longer using BT 40/10. Instead they using 80/20 and limit the cap for 40Mbps at £17.49.

I can see on BT site, it only offfer two products 40/10 or 80/20. So, I am not sure how plusnet can do this 40/20 for fiver cheaper?

I've been considering the PN 40/20 unlimited product (low cost area - broadband only) but the 18 month contract and £50 activation fee rather puts me off the idea. Also I would much prefer a self install with an ISP supplied modem (not an all-in-one modem/router) which doesn't seem possible at the moment?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

basically the old 40/10 service and other isps who sell 40/10 order 40./10 from openreach which is sync speed capped, not sure why you struggling to accept this.

Yes, but the crucial point is where the capping is taking place. 40/10 ordered as such with Openreach is capped at Openreach to 40/10 (independent of the ISP). 80/20 ordered as such with Openreach but provided to the customer as 40/10 is capped at the ISP, not Openreach.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

too many people think broadband costs are only what wholesale charge for the port.

there is 2 obvious reasons.

1 - burst speed costs money, it increases peak time demand so as such increases backhaul costs. this is something a lot of people on this forum have never understood.

Hmm. Netflix increases peak time demand, burst speed not so much across a wide cohort. Where there are relatively small numbers of people in the cohort it can certainly make a lot of difference, however across a wide customer base the effects of increasing data rate aren't as great as many would think.

Obviously going from sub-1.5Mb to 70Mb as I did is a big behaviour changer, however I have settled at a peak usage way below the 50-fold increase in burst speed. The main difference with what I'm doing isn't download volume, it's jumping from SD to HD video. I imagine this would go for most on such low speeds previously, however those who were already able to watch in HD aren't going to have a massive behaviour shift.

BT Wholesale have statistics for this. The main driver for bandwidth consumption isn't the headline speeds, it's Netflix. People who do the same things they did before use more bandwidth for less time and it averages out.

The main instances where increasing headline speed really increases usage are on upstream more than downstream. People can up their P2P rate limit.

Netflix usage caught Sky, VM and others completely off guard. The congestion on the BT Wholesale, Sky and VM networks is directly attributable to increased usage of high quality streaming video. Whether a customer has 330Mb FTTP, 152Mb cable, or 38Mb FTTC they will still pull Netflix in Ultra HD. Where those speeds make a difference is downloads, and across a cohort as downloads finish more quickly on the higher speeds the actual overall peak usage per customer doesn't increase much.

Do the maths on these products, you'll see the proportion of the costs allocated to bandwidth versus the port costs is pretty minimal. An 80/20 FTTC service is £9.95 a month, not including VAT which obviously puts it up to £11.94 before it's left the exchange.

Then you have the costs of transport on the BT Wholesale network, the cost of the MSIL between BT Wholesale and Plusnet, then all Plusnet's network, admin, etc, etc costs.

The actual proportion of the pricing allocated to handling the 'burst speed' there is tiny.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Jun-14 16:13:12)

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Netflix usage caught Sky, VM and others completely off guard. The congestion on the BT Wholesale, Sky and VM networks is directly attributable to increased usage of high quality streaming video.

iPlayer etc. 720p 2500Kbps VBR might be the norm though - what's the bit rate on that "high quality streaming video"?

I never said it was a proportional increase, but regardless it does increase the peak time demand, whether its 2% 10% 30% or whatever it will increase it. I doubt its free to provide higher burst speed.

Glad you did acknowledge tho it does also tend to increase usage as well. I do agree with you as speed gets ever higher the usage increase will be less of a jump.

The same isps you listed wre also caught off guard in the past when increasing speeds as they had some misguided belief that when you increase speeds people wont use that speed Adsl max introduction had issues when it started a variety of isp's were caught out, VM have been caught out multiple times when they increased their speeds.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 27-Jun-14 00:58:56)

In reply to a post by mixt:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

basically the old 40/10 service and other isps who sell 40/10 order 40./10 from openreach which is sync speed capped, not sure why you struggling to accept this.

Yes, but the crucial point is where the capping is taking place. 40/10 ordered as such with Openreach is capped at Openreach to 40/10 (independent of the ISP). 80/20 ordered as such with Openreach but provided to the customer as 40/10 is capped at the ISP, not Openreach.

I have never heard of an isp supplying 40/10 on the 80/20 openreach service. that makes no sense. It increases wholesale cost, and adds risk of line instability.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 27-Jun-14 00:50:04)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I have never heard of an isp supplying 40/10 on the 80/20 openreach service. that makes no sense. It increases wholesale cost, and adds risk of line instability.

Well exactly, so why are Plusnet offering 40/20 then? That has to be provisioned on a 80/20 product. The only difference I can see is that the 40/20 service has higher traffic priority within Openreach (as it's really a 80/20 product) compared to 40/10.

And yes, you're right about line stability too. Plusnet are effectively no longer giving the customer a choice of the real FTTC product that will be provisioned on their line; seems like they are just jumping in and provisioning 80/20 regardless, for any of their FTTC products.