Just want to get some reassurance before I press the “go” button! Currently on the BT infinity 2 76mb(?) and yes, I have spoken with there retention service but could not get near the monthly cost of Plusnet. Testing my upload and download speeds I don’t seem to be getting any where near the 76mb (more like 30-40mb), so in order to reduce costs further I was thinking of going with the Plusnet unlimited fibre 38mb package. My question is 1) will I notice the difference in internet speed (should I pay the extra £5 for their 78mb service)? 2) Is the basic TV package rougly similar to BT (I’m not interestd in sports package, etc)? It’s Friday, fire away…

Don’t BT own Plusnet?

Pimpmaster Jazz – Member

Don’t BT own Plusnet?

Yup. The move would be from BT to BT with better service, so expect the same performance

Correct.

Plus net is BT’s value brand. Unfortunately, once everyone signs up they discover the value isn’t as good as the marketing….

I moved from BT to Plusnet, my package costs £18 a month for unlimited 38mb and all calls.

The same as the OP I wasn’t getting anywhere near the speed I was meant to from BT.

In fact the speed went up when I changed to Plusnet. Not sure how that works so I asked the question on here of course.
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/changed-from-bt-to-plusnet-and-connection-is-faster-and-more-stable-how

gobuchul – Member

I moved from BT to Plusnet, my package costs £18 a month for unlimited 38mb and all calls.

Bimey! That’s a good deal! Is that including line rental?!

I’m paying £18/month with Plusnet for ‘normal’ broadband or whatever it’s called these days, with a phone line but no call package attached (incl. line rental).

My package is for BB, TV and phone and Plusnet are £38/mth (+£5 for 78mb). With BT it would be £70.48/mth, down to £57.98/mth (76mb) after going through there retention service! I’m assuming the costs above (£18/mth) are for broadband only!

Bimey! That’s a good deal! Is that including line rental?!

I’ve just checked my account and it’s actually £13 a month, however I paid my line rental in advance which is £15 a month.

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ourmaninthenorth – Member 
Correct.
Plus net is BT’s value brand. Unfortunately, once everyone signs up they discover the value isn’t as good as the marketing….

Value is partly in customer service, which is very good. They’re fairly much untouched by BT ownership and still much the same service they were prior to that, for the good.

As before BT, the lines are still BT anyway so the line speed/quality will be much the same. Though PlusNet support are quite good at giving the BT engineers a prod, plus they can do some of the remote things themselves (line profile stuff for example).

A note on pricing is that PlusNet’s value is better on the cheaper Exchanges. They price based on BT Wholesale’s tiered prices which means it depends where you live.

Anyway, I was on PlusNet for broadband from the start but switched the phone later and it was a doddle really. Only negative was caller ID was a chargeable extra whereas think it was included in BT. Though think I’d get it included on a higher package but I make very few calls to justify it. In fact caller ID is the main important feature for me as I rarely make or receive calls and use caller ID to filter junk calls, only answering numbers I recognise.

Oh, and PlusNet have their own routers. Not sure if you get to keep BT hub thingy. Though all should work anyway with the right settings. PlusNet’s wifi range in their routers is not known for being great, but you can get a better router or just a wireless access point and locate it somewhere central.

TV… don’t know.

Plus net is BT’s value brand. Unfortunately, once everyone signs up they discover the value isn’t as good as the marketing….

Been with them since they swallowed Force9 so knocking on 18 years. Always been excellent, though I can’t vouch for the fibre (he says with a degree of bitterness). ADSL and phone with them, I’ve no interest in the bundles with TV etc. so it works well for me.
Plus they still honour my referrals discount, knocking about £7 off a month.

All good info. I have just switched pressed the button to switch from non-fibre broadband with BT over to fibre from Plusnet. Fingers crossed on May 18th…

Changing from non-fibre to fibre might require a quick Engineer visit. Unfortunately this is where you’re stuck with BT coming to your house, so they’ve been known not to be the most reliable. As above though, PlusNet will push/prod/complain on your behalf

Thanks for letting me know. I work from home so cannot afford to be off-line for too long. Was hoping that the transition would be seamless, but perhaps not. Luckily my in-laws are nearby so I can nip to theirs if I have issues with connection.

tbf our last change was absolutely fine(done it a couple of times in different houses), in fact he actually turned up 24hrs early as he just so happened to be in the area. The previous time we had a missed appointment but the old connection was still up until they’d been so no issue (from what I can remember, the Mrs works from home so she wouldn’t be too happy)

Just bear in mind that the speeds you get are largely dictated by your WiFi set up, not the ISP necessarily. I’m on the plusnet top speed of 80/20 and get 40ish over WiFi but full whack when cabled. You will notice the difference if you stream to multiple devices for example.

Plusnet are great though 🙂

It’ll be interesting. I live in the sticks and they have only just upgraded our local cabinet to fibre, so my speed should go from a woeful ADSL 3-4Mbps to whatever the fibre offers. I remote desktop and share desktops via skype a lot and the up speed is as important as the down speed for me. My current up speed is about 0.2Mbps on a short ethernet connection direct to my router which is on the master socket with a short cable, so as good as I can make it. I am promised about a 2Mbps up speed. We will soon see if they are right 🙂

Thanks all. I think I’ll do a bit more research before I press the button. But it looks like Plusnet are the way forward. So for the low fee of £13/mth, I assume you are paying the up front “saver” fee which for me would be about £255(?).

gobuchul – Member

I’ve just checked my account and it’s actually £13 a month, however I paid my line rental in advance which is £15 a month.

Ah, OK. So, including line rental it’s £28/month.
I enquired about upgrading to fibre & it was going to be an extra tenner – so would match the £28 you’re paying although that’s with no call plan….

badgerbater – Member

My package is for BB, TV and phone and Plusnet are £38/mth (+£5 for 78mb). With BT it would be £70.48/mth, down to £57.98/mth (76mb) after going through there retention service! I’m assuming the costs above (£18/mth) are for broadband only!

Mine is £18/month for normal broadband & phone, including line rental but doesn’t include any call package. No TV either.
We are probably going to upgrade to fibre in the not-to-distant and that’s gonna be another tenner on top; so £28/month….

In equivalent terms, we pay £10.01 per month for line rental and broadband with Plusnet.

(I paid £144 upfront for 18 months’ line rental and broadband – £194 net of £50 cashback – with monthly payments of £2.01. Calls are at standard 12.5pm rate, which we are avoiding by using mobile minutes.)

Seems like outrageous value to me, given that I can’t tell any difference between that and our previous Sky broadband.

I switched 2 months ago.

tallmart10 – Member 
It’ll be interesting. I live in the sticks and they have only just upgraded our local cabinet to fibre, so my speed should go from a woeful ADSL 3-4Mbps to whatever the fibre offers

The key is the copper signal strength and quality which is based on line length and with fibre to cabinet you reduce the length of copper dramatically to just the distance to the cabinet. Nearer you are to the cabinet the higher the speed, but you should see a dramatic improvement in speed and reliability is often improved too.

Switching to fibre will need an engineer to swap over cables in the cabinet and will also need to hook up the extra fibre modem unless you’ve got an integrated hub that does it all in one. I think with pure BT it may all be done in the hub, with PlusNet it’s often a separate fibre modem and then ethernet cable to the router. Doesn’t take too long.

Note the speed may initially be lower until the system works out the quality of the line.

Thanks for the heads-up, deadkenny

As a little side note, is the Plusnet-supplied router any good? The BT home hub 4 was significantly worse for wifi in my house than my old Netgear DG834. I bought a Netgear Nighthawk VDSL/ADSL Modem Router AC1900 to solve the problem but haven’t plugged it in yet.

The router is ok, but we did end up upgrading as the only place we can really have it is shoved in a corner. Certainly worth a go before writing it off

Thing is the router doesn’t have to be your wireless access point.

A ‘wireless’ router serves two purposes. One to route connections in and out of the house, and the other as a wireless access point. Problem is the wireless antenna is usually internal and bit rubbish, and being a router they are often located by the phone socket which is often in a corner of the house where signal will be worst for the rest of the house, and you’ll lose half the signal through the external walls.

Router at phone socket to keep the copper length to a minimum and Ethernet cable to a wireless access point located somewhere central in the house.

Or if you have a separate fibre modem and router, the modem at the socket and then a long Ethernet cable to move the router so somewhere central.

I went from BT to Plusnet, never had to use their “famed” customer service, but it does seem to drop out more now.

We went from BT to the Post Office.About £27 a month including line rental,UK landline calls,unlimited b’band,weekend calls to mobiles and if you have friends in the EU,weekend calls to landlines.
Not sure if they do tv though.

Plusnet are due to increase their prices at the end of June.

I use a Homeplug system to transfer broadband to our set top box, which is on the other side of the house and it works well.

I know about Plusnet’s price increase, but it’s still cheaper than BT.

Oooh, I forgot. We got £75 cash back from Plusnet and it came through within a few weeks….!
Didn’t even realise we were entitled to it until we’d signed up.