To hell and back, then out the other side.
Yesterday, I placed an order for a broadband product, that wasn't through Plusnet.
I have been a customer, mostly on and partly off for a very long time, going right back to the days of paying my monthly fee to force9 and utilising an 0800 dialup number, long before what we know as broadband existed in the consumer market. I have done quite well out of the referral scheme, which is great and I have no problems recommending plusnet to anybody, including recently taking up their service in my business where internet connectivity is a critical part of the business.
Over this summer time, on my home connection, I was experiencing problems where for periods, my adsl would continually drop sync and reconnect, then be fine for a few hours. To resolve this fault took nearly 3 months I think and no one really knows what the fix was. They repaired a number of broken wires where engineers had used crocodile clips on the line breaking the aluminium cable at the bottom of the telegraph pole and in the cabinet, they re-crimped a piece of wire in the cabinet where there was no shielding, they swapped my line with my next door neighbour who has no broadband, they did a lift and shift, REIN testing and all sorts else. It has mostly been ok since and with a 5km ish line I should be happy with my 2-3Mb/s service which sometimes drops below 2.
But not being able to stream high definition content, waiting ages for downloads to finish, taking two days to download the last call of duty game onto my PC has taken it's toll and I started to look for something better. But I live in the middle of countryside in Nottinghamshire connected to a 20CN exchange with no hope of 21CN upgrade or fibre upgrade anytime soon. I took this to the parish council and am now part of a group trying to raise money from the BDUK funding - although this could be a year or two away if it is even successful.
Then one evening, I happened to come across a website for a small nottinghamshire outfit providing wireless broadband into rural areas. I dropped them a line with my postcode and the very next day they had a van up doing a survey to see if they could pick up a signal out this way. Without too much fettling, they had a 25Mb/s connection up and running nicely and believed they could probably get more with fine tuning. What about latency I asked - 1-2ms to the next hop and generally 15ms to most places in the UK. Certainly beats the 40ms via my ADSL.
It could all be too good to be true and I won't be in a rush to cancel my plusnet service - but this could be the short-medium term future. It's pricey at £35/month, but I'm certain that cost will come down over time - of course the quality of the network etc remains to be seen - but if I don't try - I'll never use services like BBC Iplayer HD, Netflix etc.
So I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the guys at Plusnet - who have almost always been nothing short of helpful to the best of their ability. I cannot stick getting through to Indian call centre's where "Thomas" cannot spell his new name, where they do not understand English spoken language and where they know bugger all about the product they are supposed to be helping you with. (What's worse is that the BT openreach engineers have this very same problem!) Plusnet offer a solution to this problem, they understand the spoken language and apart from the guy I spoke to the other day who believes Nottingham is in the south - they can relate to much of what goes on.
I may keep my ADSL package on at the cheapest possible package just in case, but I sure hope you guys are still around and your principles haven't changed by 2032 when I get my fibre connection
I have been a customer, mostly on and partly off for a very long time, going right back to the days of paying my monthly fee to force9 and utilising an 0800 dialup number, long before what we know as broadband existed in the consumer market. I have done quite well out of the referral scheme, which is great and I have no problems recommending plusnet to anybody, including recently taking up their service in my business where internet connectivity is a critical part of the business.
Over this summer time, on my home connection, I was experiencing problems where for periods, my adsl would continually drop sync and reconnect, then be fine for a few hours. To resolve this fault took nearly 3 months I think and no one really knows what the fix was. They repaired a number of broken wires where engineers had used crocodile clips on the line breaking the aluminium cable at the bottom of the telegraph pole and in the cabinet, they re-crimped a piece of wire in the cabinet where there was no shielding, they swapped my line with my next door neighbour who has no broadband, they did a lift and shift, REIN testing and all sorts else. It has mostly been ok since and with a 5km ish line I should be happy with my 2-3Mb/s service which sometimes drops below 2.
But not being able to stream high definition content, waiting ages for downloads to finish, taking two days to download the last call of duty game onto my PC has taken it's toll and I started to look for something better. But I live in the middle of countryside in Nottinghamshire connected to a 20CN exchange with no hope of 21CN upgrade or fibre upgrade anytime soon. I took this to the parish council and am now part of a group trying to raise money from the BDUK funding - although this could be a year or two away if it is even successful.
Then one evening, I happened to come across a website for a small nottinghamshire outfit providing wireless broadband into rural areas. I dropped them a line with my postcode and the very next day they had a van up doing a survey to see if they could pick up a signal out this way. Without too much fettling, they had a 25Mb/s connection up and running nicely and believed they could probably get more with fine tuning. What about latency I asked - 1-2ms to the next hop and generally 15ms to most places in the UK. Certainly beats the 40ms via my ADSL.
It could all be too good to be true and I won't be in a rush to cancel my plusnet service - but this could be the short-medium term future. It's pricey at £35/month, but I'm certain that cost will come down over time - of course the quality of the network etc remains to be seen - but if I don't try - I'll never use services like BBC Iplayer HD, Netflix etc.
So I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the guys at Plusnet - who have almost always been nothing short of helpful to the best of their ability. I cannot stick getting through to Indian call centre's where "Thomas" cannot spell his new name, where they do not understand English spoken language and where they know bugger all about the product they are supposed to be helping you with. (What's worse is that the BT openreach engineers have this very same problem!) Plusnet offer a solution to this problem, they understand the spoken language and apart from the guy I spoke to the other day who believes Nottingham is in the south - they can relate to much of what goes on.
I may keep my ADSL package on at the cheapest possible package just in case, but I sure hope you guys are still around and your principles haven't changed by 2032 when I get my fibre connection
Thanks for posting,
I'm sure there's lots of people that can empathise with your sittuation and the difficulties of gaining a good connection when in rural or semi-rural areas.
I hope everything works out with your new connection and thanks for the kind words
Adam
PS most things are down south to us
I'm sure there's lots of people that can empathise with your sittuation and the difficulties of gaining a good connection when in rural or semi-rural areas.
I hope everything works out with your new connection and thanks for the kind words
Adam
PS most things are down south to us
