topic Re: Left PN for AAISP in Plusnet Feedback

Left PN for AAISP

Lorenzo48 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:55:39 GMT

A bit of feedback
Change went smoothly the other day, scheduled for 12 happened at 12:17
I was on PN Pro package so about £20 a month and bought 3 units at aaisp also for about £20 month.
PN: 20GB fixed with free Midnight - 8am when I am asleep
AA: 3 units = 150GB off peak which is evenings and weekends or 3GB peak 9am-6pm mon-fri - useage can be all mixed up. I can see this not good for some if you're at home all day.
PN: Don't use allowance - lose it
AA: Don't use allowance carry it over
PN: Need more allowance that month - billed for it (even though they had some back the month before - tough you've lost it)
AA: Need more allowance that month - use some of next months as long as you don't use the whole of next months, at which point you are charged and advised to increase package.
PN: around 4Mbps if lucky (unthrottled so is network over contended?)
AA: Get 5Mbps every time I test
PN: Great forums to get help
AA: Forum not really needed - they know I have a fault before I do - as per packet loss due to BT yesterday.
PN: Major outage - sit/wait/prey/sacrifice animals to the gods of broadband
AA: Special text code to wake staff up to sort it out
PN: Other than a few excellent staff most of the csc are new and inexperienced
AA: Very geeky and on the ball
I really liked PN when I joined but it's rapidly moved from small adaptable dynamic ISP to a large sloth like cumbersome giant.
I'd still recommend PN to someone who just pops on to use ebay and facebook with a bit of youtube etc - but I'd tell them about the forums too!
I would no longer recommend them to anyone with serious usage for business/home working or gaming.
The biggest thing I think PN should look at is; once bandwidth is purchased is letting the customer keep it, even if you only say you can carry for 1 or 2 months before losing it.
I might be looking for a second line in 18 months for a new premises and may consider PN value, so I'll hang around and see how PN develops.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

adamwalker — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 08:53:40 GMT

Hi Lorenzo48,
Thanks for your feedback and the very interesting info about AA ISP, it's definitely an interesting insight into how they operate.

Quote
AA: Special text code to wake staff up to sort it out

Personally I think this would be a useful tool for us too, by this do you mean that customers have a code to text to AA to inform them of what they think might be an MSO?

Quote
PN: Other than a few excellent staff most of the csc are new and inexperienced
AA: Very geeky and on the ball

As you may know we've had a big focus on recruitment for the past few months, from the feedback we're seeing there is a concern that this may have affected the quality of support. However as recruitment slows down and training increases we'll be watching very closely indeed to see if this improves.

Quote
The biggest thing I think PN should look at is; once bandwidth is purchased is letting the customer keep it, even if you only say you can carry for 1 or 2 months before losing it.

Personally I love this idea too, I'm not sure how feasible it will be but I will at least do what I can to increase the visibility of your suggestion at this end.
Thanks again for the feedback, we'd be very interested to hear anything more you might be able to add.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Lorenzo48 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:35:51 GMT

Hi Adam, yes for an MSO.
I am glad you took the feedback as intended and hope you get a promotion out of it
Quick, delete it before JoJo sees it and steals the ideas.
To be fair I've not told you anything that isn't freely available on their site.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Alxns — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:49:12 GMT

Hmm AAISP seem pricey when i put in my "needs" into the calculator.
they want over £150
I get the same for ...17.99.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

gswindale — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:46:55 GMT

Indeed - the packages there seem a little pricey - I couldn't get anything for less than £18 which is a bit much seeing as I'm paying £12 (or just under) here, and as they say elsewhere
"every little helps".

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Lurker — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:08:50 GMT

The point isn't really that they are "better" - as its too subjective a term.
For some people they will be far, far better. For others they will work out to be much more expensive (i.e worse)
I don't think any ISP could claim to be 'best' for everybody.
@OP - unplug your router sometime - their system will text you to tell you the line is down too

Re: Left PN for AAISP

jojopillo — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:29:54 GMT

Quote from: Lorenzo48
Quick, delete it before JoJo sees it and steals the ideas.

Too late!

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Lorenzo48 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:27:59 GMT

Quote from: Alxns
they want over £150
I get the same for ...17.99.

Yes - if you read my OP I do mention this. However what you must have put in is approx 50GB of untrottled daytime use. You do NOT get the same for £17.99 as you are rate limited and traffic managed. However this may not affect you depending on useage. If I needed 50BG of daytime use I'd be here on PN extra too. I don't have £150 to hose away on broadband.
For my useage times I get 7.5 times more than PN for the same price. This is why consumers need to look beyond the smokescreen of the up to 8meg campaign and fully understand the connection types and know their own useage.
My advice is only to find the right ISP for YOU but my main point that PN could adopt is the carrying over the bandwidth that you have effectivley paid for but not used.
Others:
I did not claim they were better or worse than PN. That would be silly and I've not had cause to raise a ticket yet.
If monthly cost is the only consideration then PN value is the package for you. Without a doubt - you'll note I was comparing PN pro on market 1.
Any other comparisons are invalid.
Blimey, it's not like I started an Iphone V Android thread

Re: Left PN for AAISP

jelv — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:57:33 GMT

Quote from: Alxns
Hmm AAISP seem pricey when i put in my "needs" into the calculator.
they want over £150
I get the same for ...17.99.

Did you factor in the special night owl rate?
[quote=http://aaisp.com/news-2010-04.html]We currently have a special bonus aimed at people doing backups and file transfers over night. Instead of the normal off peak tariff, between 2am and 6am usage is metered at 1000GB/unit.

Edit: Is O2/Be LLU available at you exchange? If so that dramatically reduces the cost.
Also: AAISP count download only, PN count upload as well - does that mean you don't need as much as 500GB?

Re: Left PN for AAISP

adamwalker — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:21:38 GMT

Quote
My advice is only to find the right ISP for YOU but my main point that PN could adopt is the carrying over the bandwidth that you have effectivley paid for but not used.

Great advice Lorenzo48, like I say the idea for carrying over bandwidth is a great one, I shall start flying the flag at this side about that.

Quote
I did not claim they were better or worse than PN. That would be silly and I've not had cause to raise a ticket yet.

Only time will tell really, keep us posted if you can.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Alxns — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:17:21 GMT

@ Lorenzo48
Yes your spot on if you really want massive download usage with priority traffic and are willing to pay
AAISP seems to be the answer though lately i've not be using as much free usage and more on paid i hope PN will provide extra peak usage options soon
@Jelv
Nope i did not factor that in silly me
and my exchange is currently market one with only BT as a provider but as we speak i'm moving to a new exchange with BE,o2,TT,Sky ect LLU
though the speed here will be pap maybe 2Mbps if i'm lucky so i don't even know with a LLU provider would make much difference here speed wise
Now this is something i didnt know they don't count upload ? now this wont effect me to much since i barely upload but still thats a nice touch by them.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

HPsauce — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 07:02:40 GMT

Quote from: Alxns
the speed here will be pap maybe 2Mbps if i'm lucky so i don't even know with a LLU provider would make much difference here speed wise

If your line is stable but long, probably not much in it.
If it's variable quality then SOME LLU providers may be better as you avoid the straitjacket of BT's DLM.
(some have their own versions or other restrictions such as a higher standard target SNRM so LLU isn't a panacea)

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Lorenzo48 — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:49:22 GMT

For Adam, I just logged in to check my useage. This isn't normal, I just decided to stress the line by updating ALL of my Miro channels overnight.
Something I could have done on PN but worried about staying up till 12 to start it or getting up before 8 to switch it off. Ihaven't got the full 3 units due to only on a half month for Sep, but they have given me 1.7 unit for the last half of this month which seems about right.
Billing from install to 30 Sep 2010 Units
Metering started 14 Sep 2010 13:00
Usage recorded up to 17 Sep 2010 10:00
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This period Bytes Rate Units
20CN daytime (09-18 M-F) 109,711,374 1GB 0.11
20CN evening (18-24 M-F) 4,473,957,060 50GB 0.09
20CN night (00-09) 6,272,576,196 50GB 0.13
20CN night special 8,347,849,555 1TB 0.01
Units so far this period 0.34
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allowance calculation
Monthly tariff 3 units
Total tariff allowance for this period 1.70
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So far this period
Total allowance 1.70
Total usage 0.34
Under usage to carry forward, so far 1.36

It seems to work more like the electricty bill than BB.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

adamwalker — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:59:26 GMT

Cheers Lorenzo,
Does the A&A usage monitor allow you to drill down into the data and see what different types of internet traffic have accrued the usage?

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Lorenzo48 — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 11:13:15 GMT

I don't believe so - I'll have a look for you. As there is no traffic shaping I'm doubtful.

Re: Left PN for AAISP

WebDude — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:24:40 GMT

Quote from: jelv
Did you factor in the special night owl rate?
Also: AAISP count download only, PN count upload as well

Knew they only count downloaded data, but did not know about the night owl rate - thanks for the info.
(Unmetered upload ideal for a radio station wanting to feed audio stream and webcam output to the internet...)

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_
the idea for carrying over bandwidth is a great one, I shall start flying the flag at this side about that.

Thanks Adam - I just hope you don't find that colleagues shoot the idea down in flames. Not sure if others (when there was the initial discussion about 5 quid for 5 GB being discussed) secretly wanted to acknowledge the 'fairness' aspect of carry over but weren't allowed to, or just that the company line had to be strongly reinforced that it was the way forward and nothing would take SS Plusnet off course from it, but the reaction previously was one of 'sorry, not an option' (from memory, I've not gone wading through old threads about it).

Re: Left PN for AAISP

adamwalker — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:52:08 GMT

Quote
Thanks Adam - I just hope you don't find that colleagues shoot the idea down in flames. Not sure if others (when there was the initial discussion about 5 quid for 5 GB being discussed) secretly wanted to acknowledge the 'fairness' aspect of carry over but weren't allowed to, or just that the company line had to be strongly reinforced that it was the way forward and nothing would take SS Plusnet off course from it, but the reaction previously was one of 'sorry, not an option' (from memory, I've not gone wading through old threads about it).

If I believe in something strongly I can be very tenacious so I won't give up easily

Re: Left PN for AAISP

Lurker — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:35:19 GMT

I believe the issue preventing this was a system one, rather than a desire to be unfair. At the time I think PN had bigger projects to sort, which were more deserving of development time (from a business POV)
The question is whether there is sufficient headroom to complete such works now?

Re: Left PN for AAISP

adamwalker — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:50:32 GMT

I can't go into specifics but bigger projects will generally prove to be an obstacle. I'm not expecting anything to happen over night here as the next job would be for me to prove to the business that there is a demand for this and also what positive impact implementing something like this would have.