At the crossroads

PN Unlimited looks better for me, work from home and sometimes have to work well into the peak hours period (which is 4pm to midnight for my Premier 1 acct), and I always try to keep anything big out of this peak period.

However, moving over, for 12 months, no hardware and no way back if I find a problem was not a good deal I thought. Luckily I'm on a Market 3 exchange, which then made me look around as to what options I have.

Now, 5+ years with PlusNet and I've been issued my MAC code. Just debating whether to carry on down the PN road, or turn onto the LLU road with O2 (or someone similar).

If there was no minimum contract length for long term customers, or some other incentive to change I wouldnt have even looked at other options, but I have and what I've seen looks good.

Decisions decisions...........

Simple enough options...

1) Stay on Premier - Good account - is allowance enough? - no contract.. status quo remains.

2) Change to New "Unlimited" - good deal, on a Market 3 exchange - pay attention to protocol rate limits would they affect you... The 12 months contract is annoying me there should be an option for customers to transfer on full price no introductory discount or equipment and retain 30 days notice. Hopefully that will come soon Plusnet have already softned their initial stand there. Saving of £10-11 first three months and Market 3 exchange so continued saving of £7 or so thereafter.



3) o2 LLU - would be my choice if it was available and I really wanted to leave, As an O2 Mobile customer you get a discount and most reports are good. The speeds would also be an improvement with no reported traffic shaping as yet. LLU seems to be better for those annoying resyncs and days of speed drops than MAX.

Personally I'd stick on the Premier for NOW and see if PNs stance changes and look to see when Adsl 2 is available on your exchange. If available try and get on the trial. PN has a good community and excellent support staff particularly at the top end which may not be as good elsewhere.

Sometimes the grass is greener but sometimes better the devil you know.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Feb-09 10:53:48)

What I'd like to see them do for existing customers on legacy packages is offer them a one month long trial switch to the package of their choice. If the switch works out ok you move to that and start a 12 month contract etc. If it's no good for you then you switch back and carry on as before.

It seems that the main problem with the contract lengths is the uncertainty that the new package will be right for you and then you're stuck. So that's leading long-time customers to think that their time is up and they should switch. Giving the ability to trial the package would surely alleviate this problem for the customer and also help customer retention for plusnet.

Any plusnet reps have a view on this? I'm on a legacy PAYG and I wouldn't dream of switching to a new package and locking myself into something that turned out to be unsuitable for me. But if I could trial it and it was OK I'd sign up.

The 12 months contract is annoying me

Also worth pointing out that, if it's the 12 month contract that's the problem, all of the O2 options carry a 12 month minimum term.

See the bottom of this page.

yes, o2, minimum 12 months. current offer would include a new router, 30 day money back guarantee and if you look around, a £50 cashback offer for signing up, pretty good deal!

In reply to a post by paddyclark:

look to see when Adsl 2 is available on your exchange. If available try and get on the trial. PN has a good community and excellent support staff particularly at the top end which may not be as good elsewhere.

Sometimes the grass is greener but sometimes better the devil you know.

You mean WBC ADSL2+. The problem with that is it still has BT IP Profiling, with 1Mbps steps above 8Mbps so an even worse effect if you get a low sync at some time.

Better the devil you know? Surely the O2 LLU devil is much better known than BT's WBC?

Thanks for that Bob... I wasnt aware of that.

That will make it a more interesting proposition for me if O2 ever get to my exchange.
They would be my alternative supplier of choice.

You will note that my comment was pretty 50 / 50....

stay with a supplier your are happy with for a number of reasons.. (but preferably without committing to a contract) or go for the switch to marginally faster lines (long line) but as an unknown quantity comparatively speaking service wise.. (Edit) Plus migration which can have its own problems from time to time.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Feb-09 11:58:48)

Well, I took the plunge, today I have used my MAC code, I have signed up to O2 via quidco and got £50 cash back, O2 standard LLU broadband at £12.23 a month (I'm not an O2 customer, not a good signal from them where I am), a new router on the way and a 12 month contract, oh and 30 days money back.

I'm currently on PN Option 1 which was costing £21.99 a month, I was going to move to Unlimited at £15.99 a month (Market 3 exchange), but with all the lack of customer loyalty, etc, I decided I'd go check out the grass that seems green in LLU land, plus for the first year I'll save £162.12 over my current package (and still £84 on Unlimited) which is good in the current climate!

Who knows, I may be back at PN towers within 30 days, I could be back in 12 months, but I wont lose anything by going to O2.

5+ years and several referrals (some I get money back for, most not) and I'm leaving :.( I've never had issues, PN have sorted my few problems out quickly (although it can be frustrating being treated like a noobie, thank god for these forums and the likes of Chris and Mand).

I'll be in touch, there may be other people who have been prodded into looking about just because of the product change so I'll let you know how the move is......

Best of luck fella.. Let me know if you get much of speed increase...

Call this PRE O2

Item Downstream Upstream Unit
SNR Margin 7 13 dB
Line Attenuation 59 31 dB
Data Rate 2688 448 kbps

Connection is set at 2000 though, lets see what LLU has to offer......

Thats why I wanted to know your line length seems similar to mine.

Here are my figures

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5515 kbps 1148 kbps
Line Attenuation 51.5 db 29.7 db
Noise Margin 4.4 db 5.8 db

I would guess you'll get a bit lower than me based on your attenuation of 59dB

I cannot tell you any adslmax figures for comparison as I went straight from 2Mbps fixed speed to Bulldog LLU. Have been on LLU ever since

Here is a speed test I just ran which gives you an idea of the "real" speeds I get

Edited by Squirrel (Tue 24-Feb-09 21:46:33)

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5515 kbps 1148 kbps
Line Attenuation 51.5 db 29.7 db
Noise Margin 4.4 db 5.8 db

I dream of stats like that I doubt I'll get much faster sync wise, however the upload speed will be a lot better and the actual speed should be faster due to the sync -> actual being better on LLU than DSLMax.

Fingers crossed anyway, but I'll know next week

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,148 / 6,425
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31.0 / 53.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.0 / 7.5

My sync jumped from approx. 4500kbps on the BTW product to over 6000kpbs on sky LLU and now is the above figures on O2 LLU.
Have to keep an eye on my attenuation cause from what I remember it has jumped from 48db on BTW(Billion router) to 55db on SKY(dg834gt) and now 53.5 on O2(I believe the v2 router).

Cheers.

In reply to a post by fig:

Call this PRE O2

Item Downstream Upstream Unit
SNR Margin 7 13 dB
Line Attenuation 59 31 dB
Data Rate 2688 448 kbps

Connection is set at 2000 though, lets see what LLU has to offer......

My new O2 stats today after moving:
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 991 / 3,134
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 15.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 36.0 / 62.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.5 / 6.5

Attenuation has gone up, but my sync has gone up and my downloads are about 25% faster on LLU. Upstream is roughly double too.

All round, I'm extremely happy, it's early days though so who knows.

I had 5+ years of happy connections with PN, lets see how O2 fares.

Oh, and the Quidco deal for O2 is apparently £70 cashback now and several months free, doh!

In reply to a post by fig:

My new O2 stats today after moving:
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 991 / 3,134
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 15.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 36.0 / 62.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.5 / 6.5

Attenuation has gone up, but my sync has gone up and my downloads are about 25% faster on LLU. Upstream is roughly double too.

All round, I'm extremely happy, it's early days though so who knows.

I had 5+ years of happy connections with PN, lets see how O2 fares.

Oh, and the Quidco deal for O2 is apparently £70 cashback now and several months free, doh!

Only one month free .

Re those stats, after the first few days of DLM, during which the sync may fall a little , I recommend you force the O2 box to use ADSL2 rather than ADSL2+. When you do that your attenuation drops back to what it was before so your sync goes up, as you aren't really getting anything from the higher ADSL2+ frequencies.

In fact my Netgear with DGTeam firmware automatically selects ADSL2 if I give it the choice.

To do this on the O2 box you have to use a CLI command. If you want I will find it for you another time, along with the command to return it to ADSL2+ if desired.

ADSL2 mode, new stats:
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 975 / 3,695
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 18.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 36.0 / 58.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.5 / 6.5

My sync is over 1Mb higher than DSLMax on LLU!!!!

I bet that gives you over 3000kbps on a TBB speed test as well, above your previous sync and 50% higher than your profile was.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 04-Mar-09 15:09:29)