An ISP will not simply go bust if people use it a lot, end-users will experience increasing evidence of contention, ISP can spend their way out of that, or just let the contention continue to control the amount of usage

This post assumes an ISP is using fixed price CBC BT Centrals.

Andrew

"Will any ISP other than PlusNet give me the same package deal at eityher the same price or a few pounds more, without demanding that I tie my phone and/or tv in with them? "

No, no ISP will, simply because Plusnet's business model is unsustainable in its current form. Look at whats happened in the last 12 months as a result of that and you'll see exactly where i'm coming from.

So you are saying that all ISPs will either cap at, say, 2 GB, or ask, say,

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.....I do not think that the new 'free' ISPs are sustainable in their present format.

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I agree to an extent, but not with Sky. In their case, levering more income from their existing assets, such as premium sport and movies, and other paid-for services that they intend to offer via their portal, is a fundamental part of the long-term business plan.

That's aside, of course, from the fact that the risk of unsustainability is mitigated by the requirement that to access their broadband services, consumers have to be subscribers to their exceptionally profitable tv subscription service. As their traditional subscription tv market starts to hit its peak, managing churn (cancellations) has increased in importance to maintain growth, and their broadband service is an important addition, to encourage loyalty, whilst also an essential move in protecting the scale of their customer base (8 million+), as alternative forms of delivering " tv programmes" emerge.

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surely we will soon only have ISPs such as AOL, BT, Tiscalli, TalkTalk and Sky.

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......And that would be good for UK broadband wouldn't it

In some ways, yes. The big players alone have the financial clout to move the technology forward, eg to spread LLU far and wide, develop fibre networks, wireless networks, etc. The small players can certainly piggy-back to an extent but I as a customer like the idea that my ISP owns the whole network and assumes full responsibility for it. And as long as there are enough big players, competition will always be there to protect the consumer.

And if there are niche services which customers demand and which the big players won't offer then the smart small provider will still survive. But there seem to be too many small providers who don't add much if any value to the equation and I think the market would be better off without them.

ISPs who are willing to invest a lot of money in driving technology forward so that they gain a competitive edge are A Good Thing, imho.

Simon

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I challenge the detractors to find me an ISP that charges under

Edited by rsharma (Wed 23-Aug-06 13:07:57)

"I think the answer is that they either rely on a large number of people using very low amounts, or they tie in to expensive phone contracts.

Do you think I'm wrong? "

I don't agree completely with that conclusion but I know one thing, higher prices *can* bring benefit. PN have plenty of low usage customers but it hasn't helped them grow into a better ISP. I know they have a large number of low usage customers because I remember how the FUP (Apr 05) was only going to affect 1% of their highest users, then it became 1% of the next high users and so on and so forth until they went from unlimited, 200GB, 150GB... to the 13GB of today. No new bandwidth capacity bought, customer base doubled therefore it doesn't take a genius to work out why and what they are doing. All this in 18 months of operation. In fact their last change in April 06 showed 95% of users using less than 10GB IIRC.

I remember a while back reading a post when network costs were being discussed and someone calculated how charging an extra

I really am sorry to hear about the problems but PN really seem to be struggling with support and have been for some time. I recommend you update the ticket and keep asking them to sort it out. Also use Mr Saffron's email and send him the details so that he can pass them to PN on your behalf. You can also log into the PN portal and use their forum and hope one of the staff members reads it and acts with it. This seems to be the only way to get your problems acted on ahead of the rest.

If you get no joy in terms of resolution or answers from PN I would suggest you contact ISPA to register the complaint with them. PN are also subject to the Alternate Dispute Resolution scheme with CISAS and if you Google for either you will get to their respective websites.

3/4 of the page down for CISAS:

http://www.plus.net/support/customer_service/codeofpractice.shtml

Thanks for the response i have done most of the steps you outline, and have taken your advice re ISPA and registered a complaint there, unfortunately my patience has run out with Plusnet and have advised them to terminate my service and provide me with a MAC key, my concern is the time they will take on this simple task as there are examples of these been delayed or not provided on the Plusnet usergroup forums