Slow fibre?

[#1]

I’m not sure this is the best place to start so mods please feel free to relocate.

So; I live in the wilds of Norfolk and last year our exchange upgraded to fibre (4km away). This summer for various reasons (Sky/Poor call centre/incompetence/etc.) I moved over to plusnet and went from ADSL to FTTC. Groovy. I use a load balancing router to juggle the FTTC and a WAN connection because ”Norfolk” (everything falls over, all the time here so two connections helps a bit).

A couple of weeks ago everything fell over so I got fiddling and found that my 6-10mb/s FTTC was barely scraping 5mb/s (when it was on); ADSL speeds and reliability for FTTC prices. Not so good. So I phoned up [CSA Removed] at the plusnet call centre.

Good bloke [CSA Removed] he talked me through some of the issues and we worked out that indeed; I would be faster (if flakier) on ADSL (av. 7mb/s) but, I cannot downgrade once in contract.

So we looked up Openreach’s line data and lo, FTTP is available (1gb/s?!) but, I cannot upgrade because Plusnet isn’t doing FTTP yet.

So [CSA Removed] suggested either; plead with another ISP (for example BT) to cover my early cancellation costs (£210) and leave plusnet or get in touch with contracts/cancellations and ask; Help!

Thing is, I’m quite happy with plusnet. If you had been a sky customer previously; you’d be happy with plusnet. Hell if you were a WiSpire customer (Norfolk WAN thing) you’d be singing plusnet’ s praises.

So; as I’ve seen staff and knowledgeable mortals lurking on here; what can I do? My minimum line guarantee is 1.2mb/s which I could get on the cheaper ADSL. FTTP is available but not. And I’m quite keen to stay with plusnet. There’s enough for an OFCOM fest but I’ve dealt with them before and I’d be out of contract before that resolves. So; any thoughts?

Edit: BTW [CSA Removed] question number was 196118560 if that helps anyone. If you can, have a listen back to the conversation, we went to a weird place, it was hilarious 😆 

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): CSA name(s) removed (to an area staff can see) as per Forum rules.

[#2]

Thanks for getting in touch @Halonic I'm sorry to see you're experiencing speed problems. Unfortunately there isn't anything we'd be able to do improve on this due to the length of your line you've mentioned.

While FTTP is available for you to order, I'm afraid we closed our trial for this in July 2018 so you'd need to go to another provider if this is something you'd want, although if you're within a contract with us there'd likely be a cancellation fee.

To downgrade your service from fibre to standard broadband while above your minimum guaranteed speed would also incur a cancellation fee for the contract term.

Apologies that this information isn't anything you don't already know, I'm not sure what else we can suggest to be honest. 

[#3]

“I'm not sure what else we can suggest to be honest. ”

Start doing FTTP? 😁 Preferably soon-ish? 😁 I know plusnet is under the BT wing but I don’t really want to go to BT, they seem overly keen on bundling TV packages with everything. I already have TV, I can’t get any more disappointed with the BBC so I don’t need more TV. ZEN seem alright but honestly, I’d rather stay put.

[#4]

Thanks for getting back to us @Halonic I appreciate you'd prefer to stay with us however I'm afraid I've no news to share regarding if or when we'll be launching a full FTTP product.

[#5]

No worries, though, when you do launch: *waves*

[#6]

No problem @Halonic 

Fingers crossed it's soon!