Welcome to the latest edition of Plus, the Plusnet newsletter.

We’ve got some great news this month if you run your own website. There’s also faster upload speeds, new routers, and a redesign for the Community Forums.

As ever there’s exciting stuff in the pipeline that we’d love you to be a part of. Nearly everything we do comes from discussions with customers on our community site – come and join us and tell us what you’d like to happen.

Carol Axe
(Customer Support Director and Plus Editor)

Contents

1. Boost your upload speed for £8 a month
2. New kit makes it easy to connect
3. Important news for Webmasters
4. More recommendations for Plusnet!
5. Help us reorganise our community forums
6. Other news

If you’re a photographer, creative type, host your own website or regularly upload files you know that upload speed can be just as important as download. Now, for just £8 a month extra you can boost your upload speed with Max Premium.

The typical upload speed for broadband is 448kb/s, which works out at about 45kB a second. If you’re finding this too slow, Max Premium will increase the upload speed to a maximum of 832kb/s which will have your uploads done in half the time.

There’s more detail in the blog, if you’d like to request the upgrade you can do so at http://trials.plus.net.

2. New kit makes it easy to connect

Customers signing up for Broadband Your Way options 2, 3 or Pro now get the option of a Thomson 585v7 4-port wireless router. It’s a very solid piece of hardware that has proven to be more likely to hold a connection on long or noisy lines and it’s really easy to set up.

Don’t worry though, this isn’t just for new customers – there’s an offer in the pipeline for existing customers to be able to get their hands on one of these too.

The great thing about the Thomson 585 is that it supports TR-069. This isn’t some kind of a terminator-style killer robot or the latest two wheeled offering from a Japanese motorcycle company. TR-069 means that in the not-too-distant future the router will set itself up as soon as you plug it in. How about that? No more messing about with setting it up with usernames and passwords, it’ll sort itself out and connect to us as soon as it powers up.

Not only that but our customer support staff will be able to connect directly and securely to your router if you have a problem. This is good news for all of you who actively refer new customers to Plusnet.

For more information please read the blog entry.

We were amongst the very first UK ISPs to provide quality web hosting with our connections. Our homepages, FrontPage and CGI servers offer everything you need to create a website – whether you’re just starting out or already a web guru. Further development of these servers is limited and we’ve never been in a position to offer all the product options that we’d have liked to.

So we’re very pleased to announce our plans for a major overhaul of our web hosting servers. We’ll be using the popular Plesk software which will allow you to configure all aspects of your own webspace using an easy to understand web based interface.

You’ll be able to try out the new service on a trial basis very shortly and those keen to move over from CGI can do so right away.

More details about the trial and how to take part, as well as what to expect from the new hosting service, can be found over in the Web Hosting forum.

WebUser magazine has just voted us best broadband deal for students thanks to our monthly contracts and free overnight usage. We’re also the recommended option for gamers for Broadband Your Way Pro, and budget users for Plusnet Essential. Apple users will also be glad to know we’re officially Mac friendly.

Although we didn’t clinch the top spot, coming third in this year’s PCPro Awards 2008, we did get some great scores especially for Customer Support and Reliability. We’ll definitely be back and fighting hard for next year’s title.

Last but not least, in PC Advisor’s Reader Awards 2008,we took joint second place in the ‘Best Overall ISP’ section and picked up a PC Advisor Recommended badge for ‘best broadband deal’.

After much discussion and voting our community forums have been given a bit of an overhaul. However this is only the start – we need your help! Do they work? Are they easy to navigate? When the page opens, is it obvious where your question needs to be posted?

This is an ongoing process, but will be much better with your help. There’re now dedicated sections for feedback for both the community site itself and the service as a whole and we’d love it if you take part.

You can read the full blog on this page, there’s also more information on the thread on forum redesign and the Community Support forum.

What’s been going on in the CSC?

Well, when you have an award-winning call centre at your disposal it would be silly not to make use of it. As regular Community readers will know, we’ve begun sharing workflows between ourselves and our colleagues in Durban. Don’t worry though, the Sheffield nerve centre will remain just that – the absolute hub and centre of Plusnet.

Plusnet TV – we have a series of video interviews with staff from various departments in Plusnet, which will give you an intriguing insight into some of our staff and our ways of working. Come and meet Brad and Mike from the CSC, Ian from the products team, Nick from Marketing and Mark, one of our Business managers. You can see all the videos on our Community site.

Did you know we have a Usergroup? They are instrumental in the development of our service and have a part to play in everything we roll out. If you like the sound of that and think it might be something you’d be interested in, you’ll be glad to know they’re currently recruiting. Why not join in and make a difference to your service provider?

Plusnetplc Registered Office: Internet House, 2 Tenter Street, Sheffield, S1 4BY
Registered in England no: 3279013