BT - Plusnet??

So my contract with BT Infinity is due to end, on calling them they offered me £5 a month discount if I renew! Still cheaper with Plusnet...BUT cost aside, is there anything that will be better with Plusnet?

My main concern is ping times as I'm an online gamer, how does the Traffic Shaping on Plusnet effect gamers? I've also seen older posts about going for a pro add on for £5 per month, but can't see it listed on the 'order now' part of the site.

Thanks

Good things:

- UK support and none are script-readers. They listen, particularly the online reps here and more so in the Community forum (Excellent guys);

- traffic management article. In the past the traffic management was to protect Plusnet capacity. Now that the policy is to have sufficient capacity for all the streaming and TV catchup etc. they have simply adapted the technology to our definite advantage. The Pro product you order through your Member Center (Control Panel) once you are a customer. You can turn it on an off monthly at will - it's a monthly contract independent of your main one. On the current products it isn't needed except in very rare circumstances and for a gamer could actually make things worse. As explained in the article;

Bad things:

- because they are gaining customer rapidly their phone and ticket support staffing hasn't kept up. There are many reports of having to wait over 30 minutes for an answer on the phone and tickets (called Questions in the Member Centre) are taking days to receive an answer. If it's urgent, at the moment use the Community forum.

More good things:

- they have opened a second UK support office but not trained the new staff deeply enough. That is being sorted according to an announcement today. Also the online rep team has been tripled in size from 1 August, unfortunately losing three of the existing team who are moving onwards (and I think upwards). They are doing so within Plusnet.

- existing users I don't think have ever complained about bad effects from the traffic management. Only non-customer carpers who are opposed to it on principal.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I hope it helps.

Just to expand on what RobertoS said...

Traffic shaping does not exist on PlusNet anymore. What they do is prioritise time sensitive traffic over non time sensitive - there is no traditional traffic shaping involved in this.

What this means is that for games the traffic should be prioritised above other less sensitive traffic and therefore gaming performance should be better than if this was not in place. The only issue can be with games that PlusNet have not yet recognised in which case I believe you can raise a call to them and they will work to put it into the gaming bucket.

There should be no negative effect of the PlusNet system for gaming.

Also, this only really is an issue if you are maxing out the link. If gaming is important then I would recommend not doing big downloads whilst gaming as this should mean that there is sufficient bandwidth that the traffic management doesn't even need to take effect.

Ok thanks for the replies guys.

Good luck, whatever you decide .

It's also a good idea to check the cashback sites to see if there are any offers as well.

Edited by deleted (Tue 29-Jul-14 17:38:21)