In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Somehow, I doubt Plusnet will be able to offer the same performance as Sky at a lower price.

I'm also intrigued as to what you're basing that on?

Sky own their own backhaul, whereas Plusnet have to use BTW backhaul.
BT will shorlty be delivering IPTV, whereas Sky have a satellite.
I've seen no mention of Plusnet decommissioning their Ellacoyas, or their throttling systems. I don't think Sky have anything like this.

I agree with batboy actually, look at the maths.

BTw backhaul is more expensive than LLU backhaul yet plusnet service is cheaper, something has to give, and plusnet do have history of oversubscribing, I may well be wrong on this tho and this new unlimited service from plusnet has great performance 24./7 on all protocols. But only time will tell if it ends up that way, sky have a proven history with performance and have easynet peering.

Personally I will be watching plusnet over next 6-12 months and if all looks good over that period of time I 'may' migrate to them. But sky would probably be my preffered choice over them.

Also I agree with the others, the best bet now in terms of speed of install is to stick it out with sky.

In meantime get 3G or something as alternate use.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 20-Dec-12 16:37:50)

Definitely "now".

I might risk it, if PN offers the same kind actual performance service but for a lower price.

It would be a stupid move. Firstly you will have to cease and reprovide the line. This will probably take anywhere between 1 and 4 weeks. They can do it otherwise but it's full LLU and the move wont end up taking a nice route...

Plus then you have to wait in essentially the same queue as you've been waiting in with Sky for a bt openreach engineer to install the fibre service. Only you'd be at the back of this queue.

Yes these things can be made quicker but it costs money and ISPs don't do it. BT sometimes do but that's in exceptional circumstances. The general rule of thumb is you have to wait like everybody else for an engineer.

If you jump ship you will be waiting into February I pretty much guarantee & it will be a massive headache.

Also as people have mentioned this unlimited on PlusNet is very ambitious (something has to give) and I don't see it being nearly as good as Sky once it gets lots of subscribers. I could be wrong here.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 20-Dec-12 16:27:54)

Plus Net are not throttling the new unlimited services at all, they do still prioritise traffic, but that is different to throttling.

I am concerned about the new unlimited packages, and hope they can cope with the increased demand. I myself have changed over to the new packages, only 4 months into an 18 month contract I'd be stupid not to - just in case they withdraw it from sale at a later date, or our usage increases drastically.

We all predicted doom and gloom when BT Retail dropped their 300GB allowance and went unlimited. That was years ago.

The Plusnet package that has just been replaced was 250GB peak and unlimited off-peak. So was already higher allowance than the old BT 300GB.

I see no reason to believe Plusnet will have any real problems coping with any extra demand, and no doubt they do have some funding allocated for the probable traffic increase. They will obviously be hoping for an increase in customer numbers and traffic! They have stated a few times over the last few days that they have already provided for the immediate forecasts.

None of us have any idea of the actual costs and revenues involved. There is a tiny, miniscule possibility that Plusnet management do .

I haven't checked Openreach and BTW pricing recently, but believe several aspects have gone down in price. We also have to consider that as a major customer of both, quantity discounts will be available to them, without breaking any equivalence rules.

Only time will tell, but I too will be upgrading in the next few days.

I didnt say they throttling and I agree that on paper right now they 'seem' a great BTw based deal as they even saying now they dont expect any constraints on their bronze traffic.

But I think it pays to be cautious because they have history, what we dont know yet is how things will be in a year time after a load of new heavy user signups.

So yes my comment is if they can prove to handle the new upcoming demand or not, the plusnet staff have cleared up whats happening in terms of deliberate throttling (is none).

To the OP tho regardless of that his best bet is sticking on his current install path as he will get complications migrating mid install.

He wouldn't be migrating mid-install. He would just be cancelling the FTTC install. The question that then remains is whether he could keep the recently installed Sky phone line on an SMPF basis and order FTTC from elsewhere.

I believe he could, as long as some Sky twit didn't cease the line at the same time as the FTTC order cancellation. However I too have expressed reservations about the timescale.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

He wouldn't be migrating mid-install. He would just be cancelling the FTTC install. The question that then remains is whether he could keep the recently installed Sky phone line on an SMPF basis and order FTTC from elsewhere.

I believe he could, as long as some Sky twit didn't cease the line at the same time as the FTTC order cancellation. However I too have expressed reservations about the timescale.

I've got a lot of ground to cover while I've been away!

Today I received a call from the Sky TV executive (CEO's) team and had a 15 minute talk about my order. She apologised very politely, and I explained my frustration, but the outcome is still 7th January. Her explanation was that if they meddle with the dates, they might muck something up and it could get pushed back. In thinking about this, I was about to say that she try to play around with the dates and maybe I'll get lucky, and if I didn't, I would just cancel the order and start fresh with PlusNet.

Why would I do that? I placed an order for ADSL2+ with PN last night for a relative, and they'll be activating that on 1/1/13. The ordering process was a pleasure and I all information easily available to me, and all choices on the phone line/broadband package shown. I also happen to check how the FTTC ordering thing goes, and it provided me with a time slot (10/1/13) but because it's a matter of urgency I went with ADSL2+ for the time being.
The Sky Fibre Unlimited Pro order on the website was almost on the same scale, but I found it less informative and pleasant than the PN one. Now, we all know just how badly the installation went. I can only speculate if it would have been better with PN - I can assume it would have seeing so much positive feedback for PN and negative for Sky - but I am not cancelling my order and will stick it out, I've spent enough time on this for the moment!

With regards to mobile broadband, I happen to have got my Lumia 920 on EE on Monday with a 1GB data allowance. Through some form of OS trickery, or the speed testing app getting stuck at 54Mbit download, I used more than 800MB of the allowance in 3 days! I would only have been happy if my old Galaxy Nexus on Three worked, but the network has 0% coverage in this new area, so I had to cancel my contract with them - I loved Unlimited Data and got it specifically for situations like this where I had no broadband!

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I didnt say they throttling

Sorry, that bit was directed at Batboy, should have made that clear, or simply replied twice, once to each post.