Guess what? It’s that time again! (… well almost)

Over recent days engineers have been busy putting the final touches to the installation of our next 622Mbps central, affectionately referred to as ‘Plusnet 16′.

We’ve now lit the first two ’segments’ of this pipe which is basically half of it (there are four 155Mbps segments per 622Mbps pipe).

This means that there’s now more bandwidth to be shared amongst everybody on ‘Up to 8Mb’ 20CN platform.

Customers connecting to the new segment will see their traffic routed through the gateway known as pcl-ag02

We’ve activated this bandwidth to accommodate the expected increase in customer numbers over the coming months, and the almost guaranteed increase in average usage as the year progresses.

When new capacity is added to the network, it takes time for it to balance and for a representative proportion of the customer base to connect to the new segments. In order to speed up this process we might  need to briefly disconnect some broadband customers from the Internet. If we decide to do this then we’ll announce further details as a planned maintenance notice nearer the time.

We’ve been continuing to add bandwidth to our 21CN network (Up to 20Mbps) over recent months too!

Terry, best known for his time on ‘The Word’ said: “Plusnet has the lot – easy set up, great customer service, quick connection speeds and affordable prices. I’m so pleased I was recommended Plusnet!”

This Saturday, Terry will be at the Pass Plusnet On event at the Trafford Centre in Manchester.

The Pass Plusnet On event is one of five planned for the Manchester area over the next few weeks and features an interactive motion sensor game that anyone can play. Whoever manages to make it to the top of the leader board each day wins free Plusnet broadband for a year.

Terry will be at the Trafford Centre from 1.00pm-3.30pm

Pass Plusnet On will be in the Orient Way area of the Trafford Centre, between Selfridges and the food court.

Plusnet will also be visiting the following locations:

20th February – Arndale Centre
27th February – Chill Factore
6th March – Piccadilly Station
13th March – Arndale Centre

So if you live in the Manchester region, come down and play the Plusnet game, have ‘a word’ with Terry Christian and be in for a chance to win free Plusnet broadband for a year.

Since then we’ve revamped our products, have officially launched ‘Up to 20Mbps’ and been busy in the background moving customers across to BT Wholesale’s 21CN network. Because of this, we’ve focussed more on making sure we’ve enough bandwidth to cope with the increased numbers on the 21CN platform. It’s for this reason that you might have seen one of the many announcements recently about us increasing the capacity on our 21CN host links.

Well, if you haven’t got ADSL2+ in your area (you can check here), then you needn’t worry as we’ve not forgotten about you – oh no siree!

Yesterday we lit almost a *full* 622Mbps central pipe for customers still on the 20CN network. This basically means that there’s now more bandwidth to be shared amongst everybody on ‘Up to 8Mb’ 20CN platform.

In the past, we’ve typically only lit one segment at a time (there are four segments per 622Mbps pipe). On this occasion though, we’ve gone the whole shebang and lit the lot!… Well almost the lot, we have had a bit of a problem getting one of the LTS’s online (There are three LTS’s per segment), but we expect that to be sorted shortly.

Customers connecting to the new segment will see their traffic routed through the gateway known as pcl-ag02.

NB: It’s worth noting the gateway checker might not work for some customers connecting to the new pipe, we’re looking into this as per the forum post here.

We’ve activated this bandwidth to accommodate the expected increase in customer numbers over the coming months, and the almost guaranteed increase in average usage as the year progresses. Also worth a mention is the fact that the Olympic Winter Games start this week and a lot of people are likely to be watching online.

When new capacity is added to the network, it takes time for it to balance and for a representative proportion of the customer base to connect to the new segments. In order to speed up this process we might need to briefly disconnect some broadband customers from the Internet. If we decide to do this then we’ll announce further details as a planned maintenance notice nearer the time.

Some of the more astute of you may be asking what happened to Plusnet 16 that was mentioned in the last capacity increase announcement? It’s nothing to worry about, it’s just that there were some unforeseen delays which resulted in Plusnet 17 being commissioned first (we ordered both at roughly the same time).

On a similarly related note, we’ve just upped the available bandwidth on the 21CN platform as well!

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Here at Plusnet we think that’s pretty Scrooge-like, so we’ve put together a special deal for you and your friends to have a merrier Christmas on us. Recommend us and we’ll send you £25 in John Lewis vouchers for each Tiscali customer who signs-up and migrates to Plusnet on your recommendation*. Tell your friends to enter our special code ’tiscali’ when they register via this page they’ll get their first 3 months free too.

Make sure they also keep a note of your Plusnet username, as we’ll ask for this once they’re up and running so we can get your vouchers to you.

Of course you’ll still get our standard referral discount off your monthly bill for everyone who signs up too. There’s no limit to the number of people you can recommend, or the number of vouchers you can get. In fact, if you recommend enough people we’ll start paying you each month!

You’ll need to hurry, as this limited time offer ends 31st January 2010.

*For the exciting legal bit, have a read of the offer terms and conditions.

Over 12,000 UK broadband customers took part in the survey. The results saw Plusnet keep top spot for Quality of Connection, which we are extremely proud of and hope to win it again next year.

Although Plusnet didn’t keep 1st place for overall customer satisfaction, our score actually increased by 2% compared to last year. It was a similar story in the best deal category with a 9% increase not quite enough to keep the crown.

Similar to our results last year, O2 won 9 out of 11 this time around, with Plusnet coming in 2nd place in 5 categories and 3rd place in 4 more. We want our titles back O2! Just wait until next year…

The results do make good reading, especially when you consider we are the only provider across the top 3 in all categories that don’t provide broadband over an LLU service.

So the target has been set to win back some of the titles next year. You can be sure we’ll be trying our hardest to make this happen.

You can read more about the awards, including the full list of categories on this page.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

The faults team are in place to handle connection problems from a second and third line point of view after the initial diagnostics have been completed.

After every fault has been closed with us, we send our customers a survey to see how their fault experience was and if we can improve in any way. Usually this would be reviewed every 3 months and the results posted on a blog like this one.

This time the survey actually covers a 6 month period.
The previous results were:

• 47% were kept updated by SMS
• 29% were not aware of 0808 free dialup access
• 74% rated the process as above average
• 53% were very or extremely satisfied overall
• 16% felt we did not understand their problem.

This period the results are as follows:

• 42% were kept updated via SMS – down by 5%
• 28% were not aware of the 0808 access – down by 1%
• 76% thought the process was above average – up by 2%
• 59% were very or extremely satisfied overall – up by 6%
• 9% felt we did not understand their problem – down 7%

The above results have shown an increase in our customer satisfaction, whilst at the same time also showing a decrease in customer dissatisfaction. Both of these are pleasing results which is showing that the overall faults process seems to be improving and customers are generally happier in the way that we handle their fault.

We have seen a drop in the amount of customers using our SMS service which we feel will get a great deal of our attention now. With the ability to use our two-way text systems we feel it allows customers to communicate with us with more ease rather than having to call.  This is essential in making lives easier for our customers who struggle to get on-line.

In more recent months we have found that we are ever more on top of faults work and that we’re providing updates on a more frequent basis. Plans are now being put in place to try and improve how fast we handle faults and to get initial diagnostics completed sooner so we can have engineers out faster and therefore clear line faults in more timely fashion.

There has been a decrease in the amount of people using our 0808 (FRIACO dialup) access but as we get further and further away from the years of dial up access then this is understandable as more customers don’t own dial up modems any more.

Currently we’re trialling our ADSL2+ service and how we will handle the faults process when we move to the new network. This is still very much a trial for both ourselves and BT and progress is being made.  We hope to move this from being a trial to a standard service we offer very soon. You can join the trial here.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them below.

The trial has now been running for several months with a number of customers being invited via our Community forums. To take part you need to be in an area of the country where ADSL2+ is available. You can read more in the dedicated ADSL2+ trial forum.

ADSL2+ is the next generation of broadband..
You can find out about the basics of ADSL2+ at our website.

More technical information can be found at Wikipedia and how it is being deployed in this country. It uses a new BT network called 21CN. If you don’t fancy wading through the Wikipedia articles there’s also a blog we wrote late last year when we first started the trial.

If you’re interested, and we do hope you will be, you can reserve your place on the trial by raising us a ticket at http://trials.plus.net – you’ll need to confirm that you have an ADSL2+ capable modem or router, we have a list of compatible hardware on our website. Alternatively you could check the literature or box that your hardware came in as this should state whether it is compatible with ADSL2+ or not.

If you don’t have one already, don’t worry – we’ll be able to supply one for £29.99 plus £6.99 postage, alternatively if you aren’t already in any contract we’ll be able to send you one for free if you’re happy to stay with us for 12 months (you’ll still need to pay for the postage though). If you need one of these please request it on the ticket you raise when applying for the trial.

Before we go into detail about how to apply we must stress that this is a trial and as such there may be teething issues with the service. We’ll be able to get any issues resolved for you in the same way as we would for regular ADSL services (i.e. by raising a fault to our supplier) and these processes have worked well thus far. As this is a trial however, there may still be ‘bugs’ in the systems. We’d also ask that you initially report any service affecting issues to our discussion forums. This will ensure a response from an agent trained in dealing with the 21CN platform.

If you are interested after reading all that, you can reserve your place by raising us a ticket at http://trials.plus.net. If you’re still not sure and would like some more information we have a couple more blogs from us at the start of the trial and an update on how things are going from September. There’s also a blog from Neil Armstrong, about his trial line and how that’s going.

If you have any questions regarding the trial that you would like answered before making any decisions, please feel free to ask them in our forum. You can also check if your exchange has been enabled for 21CN on our exchange checker. At the time of writing 267 exchanges across the country have been enabled and we expect around 40% coverage by the end of March.

Terms and conditions for the trial have been posted separately.

Many thanks for reading, we hope to be supplying you with next generation broadband in the very near future.

Dave Tomlinson

Plusnet Product Team

Over the years we’ve received a lot of feedback from businesses and resellers trying to manage multiple accounts via the Plusnet website. Whilst functional, it was a bit of a pain. We’ve had many requests to provide a reseller or partner programme which allows centralised billing, account management, dedicated tech support and online provisioning, in fact all the tools and facilities needed to manage multiple accounts.
It took us a while but we’re nearly there. Plusnet Partner, for Corporates, SME’s, Channel Resellers and ISPs is on its way.

We’re really looking forward to wishing you guys a happy New Year and launching our brand new Plusnet Partner Programme.

Manage your end users, branch offices, your teleworkers or homeworkers or add another solution to your service wrap. Plusnet Partner will deliver to your needs.

If you’re like me and can’t wait that long, then drop us an email at businesssales@plus.net and one of our Partner team will get back to you for a chat.

We’ll be back with more news and a preview in the New Year. I’m really looking forward to it.

We’ve put together a FAQ to answer some of the questions we’re being asked.

What are Plusnet doing about the VAT changes?
We’ll be passing on the reduction in VAT to our customers in their regular monthly subscriptions. Some ‘one-off’ charges such as postage and packing on hardware won’t be changed.

How will this affect me?
If you are a residential customer you will see a modest reduction in your monthly subscription fees. For business customers where prices are quoted excluding VAT, the price will remain the same, but the amount of VAT paid will be 2.5% lower.

What about referrals?
Referrals for residential customers will remain as they are – we’re not making any changes for referral credits. In other words we’re not reducing the amount we give you back in referral value for residential products in line with the VAT changes. However, for business referrals where pricing is excluding VAT, the paid out value will be slightly less after VAT is calculated.

Does this affect Broadband and Home Phone/Talk?
Yes, this will lower the monthly cost all of our residential subscription services including Home Phone.

What about Home Phone top ups?
We’re not making any changes to the way that you can top up your Home Phone account, but whatever you top it up by, will go a little bit further!

What about domain pricing?
As we quote domain pricing on our website as excluding VAT, the quoted price will remain the same, but the amount of VAT payable will be reduced.

What if I’m on a product that you don’t sell any more?
Our old products (no longer for sale) will also have their subscription costs reduced accordingly. For example, Broadband Premier will be charged at £21.52 instead of £21.99.

Isn’t this a change to my Terms and Conditions?
It’s not a change to your terms and conditions as the price has not increased. We’re only required to give our customer notice of a change to their terms and conditions if there is a “detrimental change”, such as a price increase.

Can you give me more detail about what I will pay? Won’t the prices be a little odd?
If, for example, your broadband subscription is currently £9.99 and is paid on the 23^rd of every month you’ll pay less, £9.75 to be precise, on 23^rd December.

Keen mathematicians amongst you will have noticed we’ve rounded-down the reduced cost by a further 3p to make a ‘manageable’ price point. We’d find it difficult and clumsy to have products at a price point of £9.78 for example. Over the year that represents a total saving of £2.88.

If you have a question not covered here please do ask and we’ll be happy to look into it for you.

We’ve had our issues with the e-mail service in the past but these are long behind us and we have invested significantly in the platform in recent years, and continue to do so.

In fact we’re about to embark on more upgrades in the coming weeks and months, further improving our anti-spam/anti-virus solution by rolling out Ironport appliances. Then early next year we’re giving our webmail a new lick of paint and moving to Roundcube.

Those of you who’ve been around a while will remember that we upgraded our anti-spam/anti-virus solution around a year ago to a commercial product from Postini which gave us significant benefit over our in-house system. We have been working hard in the background evaluating a number of alternative systems including Postini of which Ironport was the clear leader for our environement.

The key benefits of the Ironport system are:

• Improved detection rates
• Decreased false positives
• Outbound scanning to ensure we are not blacklisted
• DKIM signed e-mail
• Quarantine notification
• Secure SMTP delivery

We’ve seen issues mentioned this year on The Register with e-mail upgrades and migrations at Sky and this week migration issues at Tiscali I want to assure you that our planned upgrades will not cause you any issues and I’m sure you’ll agree that they enhance your service.

Bob will be along shortly with a detailed post on our planned migration to Ironport with all of the technical details of what the system will offer you.

Update: Bob’s post has now been published and can be found here.

Phil Webb

Networks Director, Plusnet