We are pleased to announce that the future of Broadband arrived this morning in the form of ‘Broadband Your Way’. Broadband Your Way replaces our existing product set for all new PlusNet, Force9 and Free-Online customers. Existing customers will be able to remain on their current products, but as of this morning our previous products have all been withdrawn from sale.
Four OptionsOur new offering, Broadband Your Way, is available in 4 base options with included allowances as follows :
Option 1 - £9.99 – 1GB included usage
Option 2 - £14.99 – 8GB included usage
Option 3 - £19.99 – 20GB included usage
Option 4 - £29.99 – 40GB included usage
You can choose to have your Broadband Your Way as a fixed price product, or you can opt to bolt on extra usage. If you want extra usage, then you can opt to pre-pay for it at a cost of 75p per GB per month, or post-pay at £1.00 per GB – once you have hit your included allowance. If you don’t wish to post-pay for usage, or don’t add any pre-paid extra usage, then your broadband speeds will be restricted to 128kbps once you hit your monthly usage allowance and have used any pre-paid extra usage.
If you’ve configured your Broadband Your Way to post-pay extra GB’s, then we have adapted the ‘Data Transfer Watch’ tool to enable you to set a maximum price that you would like to pay. Once this is reached, we will stop adding extra usage blocks and your speeds will instead be reduced across the board to 128kbps. This enables you to continue to use your Broadband connection, but at a reduced speed until a new billing month starts.
Usage is counted between the hours of 8:00am and Midnight every day and includes both Uploads and Downloads. Outside of these hours usage is free of charge and not taken from your usage allowance. All usage allowances and pre/post-pay extra usage is calculated by billing month and is reset on your billing date.
Product FeaturesBroadband Your Way is provided with speeds of ‘Up to 8Mb’ and is based on a Monthly Contract.
The new product includes all the popular product features as our Broadband Premier and Pay As You Go products used to. The following are just some of the features included at no extra cost in your monthly subscription:-
- Broadband Firewall
- Unlimited Email addresses
- Anti-Virus and Spam Detection on Email
- Included Broadband Phone minutes
- 250MB Webspace with 250MB daily traffic allowance
- MySQL Database Hosting
- CGI Server Hosting
- FrontPage Extensions
- Ability to host up to 5 domains
- Text Usenet Access
- 0808 Free Dialup if you open a Broadband Fault
You can view the full list of features here:-
http://www.plus.net/residential/broadband/broadband_home_features.shtmlBroadband Your Way comes with a Dynamic IP address by default, but with the ability to enable a Static IP at no extra cost. If you do not know what a Static IP is, it is likely you do not need one. A Static IP can be activated at any time, via the Member Centre. Customers moving onto Broadband Your Way from a current product with a Static IP will retain it following the change of product.
Product ChangesGoing forwards, all new signups will be onto a Broadband Your Way option. We will make no charges for you to more to Broadband Your Way. Once on Broadband Your Way, you can change your included allowances or switch options once a month without incurring any downgrade charges.
Broadband Your Way on our Broadband NetworkWe’ve updated our Help and Support pages with more information than ever before on how we manage these products on our network. We prioritise traffic differently on the different options.
For information on how you can expect Broadband Your Way to perform, see the following information :
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/products/broadband_your_way/experience/speed.shtmlhttp://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/traffic_prioritisation.shtmlFree Setup Offer EvolvedThe hardware provided with our Free Setup option is changing. Customers signing up to Options 1 or 2 can order a 1 Port router, whilst signups to Options 3 or 4 can get a Wireless Router. There is no charge for this hardware or activation if the customer is with us for 12 months or more. Broadband Your Way is a monthly contract product, so customers can choose to repay us for the hardware and activation and leave without any penalties.
Broadband Your Way – what’s next?This is just the start of Broadband Your Way. Our intention is to constantly evolve Broadband Your Way with new features, management tools and additional services. The next features we'll launch include:
• A 'speed boost' facility to deliver a 5-star experience for downloads
• A BT Home Hub hardware option
• Bundled WiFi minutes with BT Openzone
• Improvements and enhancements to the 'Broadband Your Way Control Panel'
• Sliding-scale referral values based on the amount you spend
Geographical SupportIn response to feedback from the PlusNet Usergroup and following discussions at our Customer Open Day, we are pleased to announce that we will be launching a geographical number to contact support in May. This will allow many customers to benefit from using their inclusive minutes in their home or mobile phone packages if they need to contact us.
More information
We’ll be emailing all our customers over the next week informing them of these new products now available to them. For more information about our Broadband Your Way products, see the product pages on our website, here:-
http://www.plus.net/residential/broadband/FAQWe will keep an updated FAQ with questions from the Community on our Community Site Blog at :
http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/04/11/broadband-your-way-faq/
