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Hesitating to switch broadband

Newbyken
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎19-06-2020

Hesitating to switch broadband

Hi. Have been with BT for years and get 42mb on Fibre 2. Am attracted to Plusnet but am told the range is between 36/54mb with a minimum of 31.9mb. Appreciate all providers tend to play safe but would be very disappointed to switch and find my speed reduced. Am I worrying unduly?
12 REPLIES 12
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

 Newbyken welcome to the Community

Before you jump ship ask PlusNet what the cost will be when your contract ends you may be in for a shock as PlusNet do not give the special deals to people renewing and there seems to a problem with the reward card

Just search on here or ask 

 

HD

Newbyken
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎19-06-2020

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

Thanks for that. Will have a look.
MisterW
Superuser
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Posts: 14,575
Thanks: 5,411
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

Before you jump ship ask PlusNet what the cost will be when your contract ends you may be in for a shock as PlusNet do not give the special deals to people renewing and there seems to a problem with the reward card

Whilst I must agree with @Anonymous , there does seem to be problems with the reward cards, mainly entitlement emails going missing. the problem of increased prices and the non-availability of special deals to existing customers is not a problem unique to PlusNet. Almost every business, not just ISP's seem to work that way.

From personal experience and that of colleagues, PlusNet are actually quite good at renewing a contract at similar costs to new customer deals. Up to recently that would have necessitated a call to Customer Options (thinking of leaving) and a bit of haggling, but now they are starting to offer sensible renewal offers by email when the contract is close to ending.

 

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

Newbyken
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎19-06-2020

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

Thank you for your reply. I am still looking regarding out of contract prices but acknowledge what you said about ISps in general. How do you find the speed you receive? Presumably you are happy given your long membership of the forum.

 

MisterW
Superuser
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

How do you find the speed you receive?

The speed you receive depends mainly on the distance you are from the Fibre cabinet. The condition of the phone line and any internal extension wiring CAN affect it but all of these factors are exactly the same as your BT product. In fact there is no difference at all until you get to the main PlusNet internet connector links from their data centres. Personally I have had no problems with speed, I have a rock solid 40Mb downstream connection, my line is estimated at max 55Mb but I am on the 40/10 Unlimited Fibre product. There are people on the forum who seem to be seeing peak time speed issues but it's been stated authoritiively by experienced PlusNet staff that they have ample capacity on their network links. The speed issues are more likely to be locally somewhere in the Openreach network, common to all ISP's, otherwise you would expect it to be seen by all PlusNet customers.

I will give one proviso when changing ISP's though and staying on a  Fibre(FTTC) product. Normally the DLM sets a target noise margin of 6db and this is what the standard speed estimates are based on. If your existing connection has been performing well with few errors, the DLM may have reduced the target to 3db which will have given a speed increase. When changing ISP's, the DLM gets reset back to 6db and so your speed goes down while it takes time for the DLM to re-learn about your lines performance.

To see what your estimate is , put your phone number into the checker here https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL (its common to all ISP's) and post the results (make sure you redact your phone number, this is a public forum) if you would like an opinion

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

davel8r
Grafter
Posts: 39
Thanks: 13
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Registered: ‎26-05-2020

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

My speed guarantee and expectations were sent out by Plusnet as:-

At peak times, we estimate that you'll get the following speeds on your line:
Download: 55 - 72Mb
Upload: 17 - 18Mb
Minimum Guaranteed Speed: 50.5Mb

My modem (HG612) is sync'd at 80Mb/20Mb and speedtest.net consistently gives me downloads in the mid 70s and uploads between 17-18 as predicted.

 

Newbyken
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎19-06-2020

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

MisterW, sorry, I did not make my question clear. I meant to say how do you, personally, find the speed you get?

Newbyken
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎19-06-2020

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

You are lucky! I just don't think I can risk switching to PlusNet and then not getting at least as good as I get from BT. I spoke to PlusNet but they made it clear, there is no get-out from the contract if speed proved rubbish. Couldn't stand being stuck in a 18 month contract.

RealAleMadrid
Aspiring Hero
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Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

@Newbyken  In your opening post you asked the question "Am I worrying unduly?"  I would say that you are, there is no reason why you shouldn't get the same speeds as you have with BT.

The speed estimates that Plusnet give are taken straight from the BT Wholesale availability checker.

It would help if you check the expected speeds using the link in MisterW's post #6 above? That might confirm that you are currently  getting the best speed you can. If you are getting 42Mbps with BT is that an actual download speed or the modem sync speed. All the checker estimates are for sync speeds so actual downloads are a few Mbps lower.

 

MisterW
Superuser
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Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

@Newbyken MisterW, sorry, I did not make my question clear. I meant to say how do you, personally, find the speed you get?

Sorry, I thought I did answer that above

Personally I have had no problems with speed, I have a rock solid 40Mb downstream connection, my line is estimated at max 55Mb but I am on the 40/10 Unlimited Fibre product.

Perhaps some more explanation may be useful. If you are trying to eke out the maximum speed a line will handle, then there will be a certain amount of errors. These are handled either by error correction or by retransmission. My philosophy was that with a max line estimate of 50ish Mb, was it really worth pushing the line to the limit?. Going for the 40Mb product means that there is 'headroom' and the consequence of limiting the sync to 40Mb means that the noise margin is greater and errors are virtually nil, so the effective throughput is probably not much less than would be achieved at the max speed the line is capable of. Personally the 40/10 product works for me, I use a VPN to access the office systems and response is excellent.

It all depends on what your line is capable of, and how badly you need the maximum speed.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

idonno
Champion
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Registered: ‎22-10-2015

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband


@Newbyken wrote:

You are lucky! I just don't think I can risk switching to PlusNet and then not getting at least as good as I get from BT. I spoke to PlusNet but they made it clear, there is no get-out from the contract if speed proved rubbish. Couldn't stand being stuck in a 18 month contract.


In theory, you should get the same as you get through BT. It is after all coming down the same wires from the cabinet. But saying that, I currently get a higher speed from my current ISP than I ever did with PN. Nothing locally got swapped out so whether that is due to better routing etc I wouldn't know. But certainly while I was with PN the connection itself was fine (apart from line faults but that is an OR problem). 

 

One reason I moved on was (as mention by@MisterW ) the deals on offer to current customers. I ended up getting a deal that nearly equalled what was then offered to new customers only. If they have changed, that can only be a win for existing customers. The only other thing that would make me reluctant to return is the absence of a 'chat' facility. PN used to have one but it seems to have been ditched (for whatever reason). My current ISP does have chat, they also do 12 month contracts. If an 18month contract is too long, shop around.

 

As for the training period of fibre. From experience what you get in the first few days is more likely to be close where your sync rate will end up. The only reason it might not be is if you have a line fault that causes DLM to intervene and set the line sync rate lower.

Ever helpful. Grin Sure, I’d love to help you out. Now which way did you come in?
Newbyken
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎19-06-2020

Re: Hesitating to switch broadband

Thanks, very helpful. If I was sure I would get the same speed as with BT I would go ahead. It is just the fear of dropping down to 31mb. Having said that, BT only guarantee 25mb.!