In reply to a post by Kenneth:

Funny how things have changed - when I first got broadband it was £50 a month (cheapest was BT at £40 IIRC) + line rental, fortunately it dropped to about £25 or so a few months later

the years 2000 I got broadband I think, Bt have just updated our exchange and offered me free connection, I had a lodger here at the time and dial up was pretty slow with two computers connected at the same time.
So I said I would get ADSL Broadband) if she paid half,to which she agreed, it was about £50 I think and line rental, then it reduced after a while.

so yes times have changed and prices have got lowered, the problem is i am not sure if the service is that much better, faster maybe, but not better .

When Plusnet announced the dropping of 40:20 I looked at alternatives, but despite Plusnet support having been bad the couple of times I have had to contact them, it doesn't look like any of the other big ones are better - I am not sure I'd gain anything moving so just stayed

Same here at the moment, even with offers, a lot of them requires a connection fee so any gain by the offers will be lost by the fee.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

so yes times have changed and prices have got lowered, the problem is i am not sure if the service is that much better, faster maybe, but not better .

Isn't that the point? That you have that the wrong way round?

Times have changed and costs, and so prices, have been lowered by cutting the service. It is still available at the inflation-updated £50 you were willing to pay in 2000, along with "up to" 76.19.5Mbps unlimited usage. (Which I don't think your £50 would have been).

AAISP 1 terabyte package.

(Subject fixed )

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 06-Aug-16 19:46:10)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Isn't that the point? That you have that the wrong way round?

What to mean the wrong way around? Services have got faster, but customer service have got worse and reliability have got worse.
at least with ADSl I had a constant speed, with this Fibre stuff I may have 24 one day and the next day it may go down to 15.

Times have changed and costs, and so prices, have been lowered by cutting the service. It is still available at the inflation-updated £50 you were willing to pay in 2000, along with "up to" 76.19.5Mbps unlimited usage. (Which I don't think your £50 would have been).

AAISP 1 terabyte package.

(Subject fixed )

Braodband is now classed more as a utility service, so prices have to stay lowish, the main problem with broadband in this country is that one company have got the majority of the network. sure we have Virgin if you are lucky to live in a place where Virgin operate and Talk Talk is doing their own network, but they are only available in larger cities, not that I would want to touch anything to do with Talk Talk.

76 Mb/s is great if you can get it, not that i would want it, but it would be nice to get the speed I had when I first came onto fibre.
It is a shame that the company I was with before i came to plusnet decided to give up broadband, I moved because they could not keep tot he speed I wanted and there was going to update their network, I would have gone back then, sadly they could not compeate against BT updating exhanges in the sticks. the only reason BT done that is because they had money from other sources.

AAISP may sound good , you think you getting a better service for that £50, the problem is they still rely on BT and it is BT system that is up the shoot.

The speed you can get for £25, or under £40 if you were including line rental in your £50 is unimaginably better than what you got then. Not forgetting the amount you can download and upload either.

There are three basic components to "service".

1) The broadband itself, covered above. The problem is that, given what is now being supplied over a network designed to carry voice only, things are going to go wrong. I'm not just talking about the fact copper is used, I'm mainly talking about the speed that can be attained.

2) The capacity provision by the ISP to supply its customers. When you were paying your £50 it was budgeted at best in the low hundreds of kbps per customer, (probably at that time not even in the hundreds). Plus you needed to turn your modem off when not in use.

If they provision insufficient then congestion, traffic management or both become inevitable. What keeps provision low? The price the customer pays.

3) Given the technology is fragile, as in (1) above, the third component is the Customer Service provided. Once again, the main factor is cost. £22.50 to Plusnet clearly isn't going to provide the same level of CS or bandwidth provision per customer as £60 to AAISP. When the technology fails, it is clear which of those two examples provides the superior CS.

£50 now is, as I pointed out, a huge amount less than the £50 you were paying for something that these days would be useless.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

at least with ADSl I had a constant speed, with this Fibre stuff I may have 24 one day and the next day it may go down to 15.

You need to get that raised as a fault. It's not normal for PN customers and not normal for FTTC either. Either your line has a fault or your exchange has capacity issues. My router says I've been connected for 97 days now and this is a speed test from 8pm Friday:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14704...

That graph is typical of what I get whenever I run a speed test. You should not put up with a second-rate service. Get it sorted.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

You need to get that raised as a fault. It's not normal for PN customers and not normal for FTTC either. Either your line has a fault or your exchange has capacity issues.

Agreed, mine is rock solid 48/49/50mbps month for month for month.