topic Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive? in Plusnet Feedback

FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

MrBarnet — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:40:55 GMT

Like many people I am disappointed that the free trial of FTTC has ended before my exchange is ready (Barnet, now quoting 31/3/11).
The extra £12/month that it will now cost to join the trial (when the exchange is ready) seems rather steep.
For example, the PlusNet Extra package already costs £11.49 a month, Any time calls another £5, and line rental £11.99/month making a total of £28.48/month. Add the £12 for FTTC and we are up to £40.48 per month.
BT Infinity unlimited broadband and calls is £28/month (after the 3 month discount period), and line rental can be just £10/month if you pay in advance, making an average of £38/month.
With BT Infinity you get unlimited downloads as opposed to the quite restrictive 60Gb limit on PN Extra, and the service is not a trial and so isn't hedged with all the warnings PlusNet give about the FTTC trial.
So, unless I'm missing something here, if you want FTTC as soon as it is available then currently BT are not only slightly cheaper but have no download cap and no excuses for poor speeds or reliability.
So far I have received excellent support from PlusNet and don't want to leave them, but their FTTC offering is just not competitive against BT Infinity.
Any comments?

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

MrBarnet — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:09:35 GMT

Oops, I've just checked and found out Anytime calls are now £3.50/m (I had the international option which is £5/month). So knock off £1.50 from the PlusNet prices and you get £38.98/month, compared to BT Infinity £38/month if you pay line rental in advance. It's still very slightly more than BT, and of course going over that 60Gb cap will cost you another £5 per 5Gb so BT still looks cheaper.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

VileReynard — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 01:17:23 GMT

I'd wait a year or two and the very finite speed on offer will be much cheaper.
Once BT have connected all those cabinets with fibre, they need to persuade people to use the fibre if they want to make their pile.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

adamwalker — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:09:36 GMT

As we're still at the trialling stage our prices aren't really in-line with fully released fibre products from our competitors. I can say with confidence that the prices should come down in the future.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

MrBarnet — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:10:36 GMT

Thanks for the response Adam.
I would have thought though that a trial should be cheaper than a fully-tested market-ready product, and that the price should go up when it is a proper product rather than down. The current charge is no incentive to go with FTTC with PlusNet, in fact its a disincentive.
M.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

thorpen — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:52:01 GMT

I have to agree with you - I was very disappointed with Plusnet as I missed the trial by 1 week and even though I phoned and asked if they would let me on - they just said no. I can't afford an extra £12 per month (who can ?) and after years as a loyal customer I have now asked for a MAC code to leave as I think this is really poor custoomer service.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

jelv — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:15:20 GMT

Please explain to me, as a very long standing customer on an exchange where I have no hope whatsoever of FTTC (and not even a date for 21CN ADSL2+), why I should subsidise you to have FTTC?

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

thorpen — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:58:15 GMT

I'm afraid it is not my fault that your exchange is capable of FTTC - are you telling me that if it was then you would not have applied to go on the Fibre trial?

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

jelv — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:00:11 GMT

Absolutely I would have done - but it would have been BEFORE the very well publicised cut-off date.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

David_W — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:43:34 GMT

If you don't want to pay the extra, don't join the trial, wait until the trial ends and then get the Fibre product which *should* be over 100Gb/month, though to compete with BT, about 2-300Gb, yeah, it'll be more expensive than an ADSL product, and if you don't want to pay, don't switch to Fibre.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

nadger — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:55:24 GMT

I was in the same situation as thorpen in that my cabinet was activated one week too late
Tough luck but no reason to change ISPs - I still get 8Mb on ADSL2+ and there are many who would like to be getting that fast a connection.
I propose to sit back and see what eventually happens.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

jelv — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:59:50 GMT

Interesting news today: BT Retail to remove Fair Usage Policy controls in April

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

MrBarnet — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:34:48 GMT

Thanks for the comments - interesting!
I don't think those of us who were hoping to get on the free trial, but failed because it ended before our exchanges were FTTC- enabled, were expecting to be subsidised by PlusNet - the trial was their idea, and there were strong health warnings that speed and reliability for those on the trial could not be guaranteed.
What I do think is baffling is that the trial continues, including the health warnings, but it now costs £12/month to join. Ok a small premium might be acceptable, but this price makes it more expensive than the market-ready product from BT. Why on earth would anyone join now? You either wait and see what happens (for how long?), or as soon as it is available on your exchange you move to BT and get it fully supported with no download limit and cheaper.
It just doesn't make commercial sense from PlusNet!

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

David_W — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:20:31 GMT

It starts off with PN needing people to apply for the test, if they started out "but you'll have to pay £12 extra" then people would think "heck no, I'm off to BT" and so minimal testing would be done. It costs PN the extra £13, and now they have a stable user base they are passing that cost on to new people who want to participate in the test.
I'm in the situation where my exchange is getting upgraded eventually, sometime soon hopefully, when that happens the trial will be over and I'll be looking at alternate providers if PN's FTTx package is not competitive (hopefully I can get FTTH as I'm near the business end of town), even now you can look at alternate providers, there are quite a few of them (not sure how many would allow you unlimited downloads off peak however), or you could wait for PN to bring the FTTx out of trials and take up one of their packages. They probably would want people to move off older packages onto Fibre packages too, which is another reason to keep the price artificially high. People on the package I'm on, have off peak from midnight till 4pm, image how much someone on that package could download at 100mb speeds!

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

Mand — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:42:33 GMT

Hi guys,
It's worth bearing in mind that we've finished the technical trial stage (seeing whether FTTC worked with our systems etc), and we're now in the commercial trial stage (seeing if it's a viable product offering). This means that the actual service won't change between now and when we start selling it to new users.
Whilst BT's 'Unlimited*' product seems very competitive I've not seen any impact of the traffic management or FUP so can't really comment on the overall service.
The other ISP's already offering an FTTC product are significantly more expensive than our product, with inferior product benefits, so I don't think saying we're uncompetitive is very fair at the moment.
I'd expect this market to change significantly in the next 6 months, and hope that we're able to make some headway.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

Force9Original — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:51:39 GMT

Its wise for PN to commercially trial the product.
BT are aready "concerned" about take up rates in certain areas:
This release is from from Mr Hall Openreach NGA Deployment Director for Wales
"Openreach has spent millions of pounds to ensure that Cardiff boasts some of the best access to modern broadband technology in the UK, but residents in some enabled areas of Cardiff are proving slow to adopt the service"
http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/Showarticle.cfm?ArticleID=28D93580-39E6-4C97-A36C-31571CBF9188

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

Mand — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:05:00 GMT

Yeah, I saw that, I think that has a lot to do with what's available in that area though.
For example, 6 months ago there was no FTTC there, but Virgin were selling 50Mb cable products, so many people in those areas will be in a contract with Virgin (as 50Mb vs 8Mb with every other provider will have given them a fair bit of market share I reckon).
I think when they start supplying FTTC where 8Mb was previous fastest there'll be a lot of gain.

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

David_W — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:55:16 GMT

One exchange to look at would be Leedstown, should be active today, no LLU suppliers just BT, another is Three Waters (obviously I have no idea if PN has customers from these two towns) which again, no LLU (Market 1 areas). The uptake on these exchanges should be incredibly high, exchanges with LLU or Cable, not so much. This wont stop BT giving priority to towns which already have LLU suppliers and the like!

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

MrBarnet — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 01:29:43 GMT

Thanks Mand for your comments.
I do hope that PlusNet commercially launch FTTC soon, and that it is competitive. I still think it was fair of me to say its not competitive at the moment, given that it does cost more than BT Infinity and has a data cap that Infinity doesn't, and that the service is not production-ready. So the only way it can go to be competitive is if it matches BT for features - especially that data cap, and is at least a bit cheaper.
I will give it a few weeks after my exchange goes live before making a decision; hopefully PlusNet will launch a good package!

Re: FTTC Trial pricing - not competitive?

TicnTac — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:07:46 GMT

http://www.utvinternet.com/broadband/fibre.aspx
Thought this link might provide a little insight into what others are offering piggybacking off BT's Fibre service.