Plusnet FTTP Trial - Is it worth it?

Hi all,

Finally today after months of trying I managed to get a provider to offer me a Fibre product!
I'm not in an FTTC area (despite exchange being enabled) but Plusnet have offered their trial 40/2 and 40/10 FTTP products to me, but I have to have phone line with them too.

I'm on Sky unlimited and getting 4 meg at present.
BT say they cannot offer me FTTC or FTTP in full or trial form.

The Plusnet assistant was keen to explain this is still in trial, so please can anyone who knows about this trial able say if it's worth signing up for it?

I.e. is it stable? I wouldn't want to sign up only to find the service keeps dropping or speeds are nowhere near 40 meg.
I appreciate the point of it being a "trial" so the occasional drop out etc is understandable, but now I'm so close to a decent speed I'm just hoping nobody is going to present a ton of horror stories about it!

Also, is the 40/10 for an extra £2/month worth having?

Cheers

If it's FTTP that's being offered I'd bite their hand off!

Your not in a Fttc area therefore BT could not offer you fibre.
So how in the hell will plus net give you fibre. are they going to dig up the road and send some cable to your house so they can do there trial.
To me it sound like the sales person has no idea and once they have you for the phone then its tough for you.
Call them up again and explain that BT say your not in a fibre area and ask in detail how they will get the Fibre to you. Also ask for that in writing.
You dont want shafted onto plusnet only to find it was a stupid mistake

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-Jun-12 22:45:05)

With FTTP you get the speed quoted (subject to throttling/congestion etc). There is no copper in the way to degrade the signal, it is fibre into your property. Fibre does have a range limit but it is around 100km before repeaters are needed.

Thanks, that is partly my concern however I am reassured by the fact that BT spent a huge amount of time last year installing Fibre all around the area, and all roads around my property can get FTTC - fibre cabs all around with the "Get Fibre now" stickers on them.

Our problem is that our house is one of 6 in a private road set back off the main road, as it was built on an orchard much later than the rest of the area, so I think we're in the land of the forgotten...

Maybe they went for FTTP up the poles as it was easier to get it to us? (we've no cable either but all other streets around us have).

My phone pole has the new black & yellow fibre cabling up it and a new ducting was recently dug into the pavement underneath so I guess they put it in and now can't be arsed to offer it...
The pole is on the main road and the cables run across the back of the other properties over to us. I think there's an access issue.

Just beware (as you're currently on unlimited) that the Plusnet product will have an included monthly useage of 40 or 120Gb per month (peak time, total of download and upload) depending on the product / price ('value' or 'extra'). While 120Gb is plenty for many people it can be used very quickly on fibre particularly if you do a lot of streaming or obsesive speed testing! Additional bandwidth is chargeable.

Because FTTP is also being rolled in some areas where FTTC is not available, plan was to reach 10 to 15% of UK this way

In reply to a post by beercan:

My phone pole has the new black & yellow fibre cabling up it and a new ducting was recently dug into the pavement underneath so I guess they put it in and now can't be arsed to offer it...
The pole is on the main road and the cables run across the back of the other properties over to us. I think there's an access issue.

I'd say your area has been earmarked for FTTP if they've gone to the trouble of running ducting up the poles.

The delay is that although FTTP speed is the full 100Mbps, there is a setup time after installation of the fibre where zero power is applied and the glass has to go dark as photons picked up before connection gradually disperse, before they can use it.
_{Oops! I thought it was April 1.}

I did a bit of digging about the Plusnet product and asked some questions of them. The responses recieved were less than reassuring.
For example, it turns out they put you onto their ADSL package (and 18 month contract) first, then upgrade you to FTTP after a couple of weeks; however if there was a problem and FTTP could not be successfully installed, you'd be locked into the ADSL package/contract for the standard minimum term...

Also, there's significant traffic shaping so not truly going to be getting 40 or 100mb for most things...

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...

Regards

That doesn't sound like much of a deal .

Nope, I think I'll stay on my measly 4 meg Sky unlimited and hold out for BT etc to offer it properly...

In reply to a post by beercan:

For example, it turns out they put you onto their ADSL package (and 18 month contract) first, then upgrade you to FTTP after a couple of weeks;

But Plusnet ADSL doesn't have an 18-month contract, it doesn't even have a 12-month contract!

If plusnet can offer it ... so can BT!

True. 'Doh!

If it IS available then BT could offer it too.

probably an error in their fantastic database !!

Hi,

At the moment we're still trialling FTTP, as such we've not set up the ability to signup direct to it via our website. This makes life a little complicated when someone who is a new customer rather than an existing customer wants to signup for FTTP as you have to signup for ADSL first and then add the FTTP trial afterwards.

You can though signup for a monthly rather than 12 month contract for ADSL, there's no minimum contract on the FTTP trial either (router and install are free on FTTP too, install usually take a couple of weeks). If the rate limits are an issue then we have a bolt on called Pro which removes them for an extra fiver per month.

Feel free to give me a shout if you've any questions or have a look at some of the posts from the customers already on the trial over on our forum.

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?board=68.0

In reply to a post by worldofadsl:

If plusnet can offer it ... so can BT!

I have been on FTTC with Plusnet since May 2011, but BT couldn't/wouldn't offer it to me until a couple of months ago.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply.
The usage limit is the key sticking point really as I manage a charity's website and email comms and do a lot of uploading of event photos to Flickr and downloading website backups etc so I think I'll easily exceed the cap.
The bolt-on certainly sounds like a deal changer - thanks for letting me know about this.

RE BT offering FTTP, I have been trying to get them to offer fibre of any kind for 18 months and gotten nowhere. Their call centre staff haven't got a [censored] clue, not blaming them but obviously the info they're being fed is useless.

Cheers!

In reply to a post by beercan:

so I think I'll easily exceed the cap.
The bolt-on certainly sounds like a deal changer - thanks for letting me know about this.

Just to clarify in case there's any confusion the Pro Add on removes the throttling not the bandwidth (data) cap, which is 120GB on Plus Net Extra Fibre product, don't know about FTTP, but assume it's the same. Also usage between midnight and 8 am is unlimited.

This may also give you some useful info

In reply to a post by beercan:

The usage limit is the key sticking point really as I manage a charity's website and email comms and do a lot of uploading of event photos to Flickr and downloading website backups etc so I think I'll easily exceed the cap.

Do you know what your current usage is? You really need to be doing masses of downloading or streaming during the chargeable time to get anywhere near 120GB a month; from your description, unless you are talking about thousands of pictures I would be very surprised if you came near it.

Pro doesn't remove the 120GB limit just the rate limits on the speed. If though you can automate some of the stuff like the website backups to happen between midnight and 8am then that usage doesn't count towards the 120GB allowance so that might help.

Essentially we've designed the products to encourage people to shift some of the heavier usage that isn't time critical (like file downloads) to happen overnight which gives us the benefit of a lower peak time demand, so a lower cost to us and a lower subscription fee for our products.

Thanks for all your comments everyone. You've been very helpful.

I could certainly look at scheduling the site backups etc.
I also use my xbox 360 online, youtube for music vids and last FM. I also have Sky anytime+ and watch a lot of films so this uses quite a few mb, but AFAIK you cannot schedule downloads on it.

Unfortunately as the sky BB is unlimited they don't allow you to use a usage monitor so I've been using PRTG Network Monitor. This reports a total usage of 46.1 Gigs in the 6 days I've been using it! (and I don't even use torrents or p2p etc)... PRTG doesn't however split reports by hours of day (that I can find), only days of week.

Regards

Right, it's all that stuff that will be eating up the bandwidth, not the charity website stuff you mentioned in the previous post!

Yeah it wasn't til I listed it all that I realised just how much I do through my connection!

In reply to a post by beercan:

Yeah it wasn't til I listed it all that I realised just how much I do through my connection!

It'll be the Anytime+ stuff, movies in HD for example can easily be 5 to 7 GB each or even more.