Considering Plusnet

Hello all, I am thinking of moving to Plusnet but can't decide between the premium and pro packages - the 80gb peak cap on premium is much more appealing than the 20gb cap on Pro. But the idea of moving from one heavily throttled service (O2 Access) to another doesn't really appeal to me either.

I'm not that heavy a P2P user compared to a lot of people, but I do use it and when I do want to download something I want to be able to do it NOW!

A few questions - are the speeds they show genuine? As in when it says I will get my line speed on Pro will I really?. Where is says I will get 2mb between xpm - xpm will I really? Or are they just max speeds/estimates?

Also if I sign up on the premium package and then after a month or two decide it isn't for me will I be able to upgrade to the pro package? Do they make it easy and is it free, or will I have to jump through hoops and pay through the nose?

And just in general...would you recommend Plusnet services?

Thanks.

Hi Starlet,

I'll let others advise on the speeds etc as it'd be biased coming from me, but I can confirm that if you want to change from one to the other there won't be any issues. I believe you can switch between products once every 30 days with no charges.

Hope that helps,

Providing there are not problems on the BT side with your exchange or it's route to the Plusnet gateways (we are seeing a fair bit of that at the moment and it affects all non-LLU ISPs), you will see good speeds at all times on Pro. Don't forget that from midnight to 8am is unlimited which might help you stay within the 20GB allowance. Also note that extra usage is £2/2GB which is rather coarse (with no carry over to the next month) and very annoying if you go slightly over!

The one time you will see a slow down on things like P2P is from bang on midnight when everybody starts their free downloads - this lasts about an hour or so.

Hi Starlet, glad to hear you're considering moving to us!

In reply to a post by Starlet:

A few questions - are the speeds they show genuine? As in when it says I will get my line speed on Pro will I really?.

There are no rate limits imposed on any of your traffic on Pro and everything is in either our Gold or Titanium traffic queues. Because of this you should see downloads close to your BT IP Profile regardless of the Internet application you're using or type of data you're transferring.

Where is says I will get 2mb between xpm - xpm will I really? Or are they just max speeds/estimates?

They are maximum values and are achieved by applying rate limits to particular types of traffic. What you also need to consider though is the fact that this traffic is also going to be in the lower priority Bronze and Best Effort traffic queues. A large number of Bronze and Best Effort packet drops on the network can push the speed noticeably below the advertised figures at certain times of the day.

There's a bit more about traffic prioritisation here on our website.

Also if I sign up on the premium package and then after a month or two decide it isn't for me will I be able to upgrade to the pro package? Do they make it easy and is it free, or will I have to jump through hoops and pay through the nose?

As Matt has mentioned, you can do this without any penalty although you may have to wait until the current billing period before the account is changed.