Plusnet Pro? Satisfactory GB Or Not Enough? Poll

[#1]

Quote from: Dom

Aye, well it's to be expected. I'd gladly pay £30+ per month for fibre.

I'd gladly pay £30/month for FTTC and decent peak/off peak times along with a respectable peak cap.  I'd gladly pay £50/month for FTTH.  I really wish I was on the list to be upgraded ASAP in the hope PN would let me stay on my current package with FTTx!

[#2]

maybe I am missing something. I am on Pro 20Gb per month. I changed to extra and found the download speeds to be atrocious due to the shaping I changed back the next day to pro with smaller download allowance as with pro i downloaded at 300 to 400 but on extra it was way down at around 100.
I like speed to downloads but the 20gb is a bit low. esp since things like i player and sky player are more the norm.

[#3]

It's all about protecting the network from people who will use it during peak hours to download, stream, things like that.  If everyone is downloading at line rate at 7pm then PlusNet would need to invest in more pipes which pushes their costs up to cope with the demand.  By having a product with a reasonable cap of 20Gb but no restrictions, it makes people think about using the network irresponsibly, you won't download 20Gb a day every day between 4pm and 9pm (for instance).  People on the higher cap packages (60Gb) can download during peak hours, but to protect the network there the download rate is limited.
It's a bit like that old Pizza analogy, PlusNet is the Pizza, Pro users can eat as much Pizza as they want any time they want, but once they have eaten the Pizza it's gone, no more to eat but it's not just their Pizza, they have to share it with everyone, so if everyone was to eat the Pizza all they wanted then there wouldn't be enough Pizza to go around and people would go hungry and die or something silly.  I may have forgotten the Pizza analogy, but the simple fact is that bandwidth is a finite resource, PlusNet doesn't have enough capacity to have all their users downloading at line rate, their resources are shared because not everyone is going to be downloading a huge file at 9am (if they did, that'd be bad) so to keep the network running smooth for everyone, they put in an artificial cap so people will stagger their usage over a month rather than blow it all in one large chunk.

[#4]

my workmates in Gallipoli
a pro pizza

an Extra Pizza, part demolished

[#5]

Quote from: Spider

Quote from: MakeTeaNotWar ...The only real benefit of Pro is that P2P is not traffic shaped .... On Extra the following at traffic shaped at various times: YouTube VPN P2P Usenet FTP Sites Servers

Eek you missed my point out of ALL of those the only one you'll likely miss is P2P... and thats still a none issue because of the extra bandwidth and ability to download quite happily over night and during the day while we're all at work, the p2p slowdowns dont seem to kick in until 7pm either.
As for the rest of the list
youtube - Ive never experienced problems at peak times streaming even 720p stuff, 3 hours of 2.5Mb is a none issue, iplayer etc remains untouched
VPN - Again a none issue for 99% of gamers and all internet users although it's being used increasingly as a back door for downloading P2P, again a 2Mb limit for a few hours is hardly going to be an issue for most
P2P - heavily restricted as you say, but on Extra compared to Pro I can download all day during the day so I think that blows Pro out of the water
Usenet - Same deal as p2p really, you can go all day if you want.
FTP - People still download and host files on FTP..? really?
Sites - Surfing/sites are NOT restricted in any way on Extra
Servers - I assume you mean download servers? well tbh I download a lot and dont remember ever seeing a 50Kb/s download going at peak time so either I've found a flaw in PNs systems or these download servers are few and far between in fact I've never seen a download after 6pm go any slower than 300kb/s so not sure whats going on there.
Pro just doesnt work on a 20GB limit, everything about it pushes you faster and faster towards your measly limit where as with extra I've always been able to do everything I wanted and not worry about my bandwidth, what they really need is another package somewhere in between Pro and Extra, charge more but ease up a bit on the throttleing at peak times and give a more reasonable bandwidth allowance.

[#6]

Basically it's a case of having great speed and a rubbish allowance, or having a great allowance but rubbish speeds.
In this day and age, we should be able to get both really, even if it costs more. Many other countries manage to provide it, so I don't see why we in the UK, who are supposedly a developed nation, have to make do with half-hearted internet.
I know it's not the fault of Plusnet, but the whole state of affairs generally is a joke. And the government pledges that everyone will have 2Mb broadband by 2012. Well that's great, but in two years time, requirements will have gone up again, and 2Mb then will seem the same as 0.5Mb is now.
We should be future-proofing our infrastructure, not playing catch-up.

[#7]

Oh, I beg tour pardon, the government has decided not to bother at all.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/15/usc_delay/

[#8]

Quote from: Dom

Basically it's a case of having great speed and a rubbish allowance, or having a great allowance but rubbish speeds. In this day and age, we should be able to get both really, even if it costs more.

But Plusnet offer exactly that! Pro gives great speeds and there's no limit to the usage if you don't set a spending limit on your account (and I think there's still a maximum cost of £99).

[#9]

To put things into perspective, I recently spent a couple of days at a friends house. They're with Virgin, and they're on the 20Mb package. (When I say 20Mb package, I mean they actually get 20Mb, and not just "up to 20Mb".)
We loaded a PC up and left it downloading things for the next 12 hours or so. In that time, it managed to download 50Gb of stuff. And 7 out of the 12 hours were restricted to 25% speeds. Even with the huge amount of downloaded stuff during their peak hours, the speeds were still at 5Mbps, and he wasn't billed any extra because they have no monthly cap. That was 12 hours worth, during some peak hours. Imagine how much you can get in a whole month.
He pays £20 per month.

[#10]

OK everyone keep your Ideas etc coming, The more the better, What about If Plusnet done away with extra and Pro and changed the Extra package to a Gaming package@ 40GB, Would also suit other customers but targeted for gamer's?  Have 3 Packages.. Value at 10GB, Gamer package at 40 GB and a new 80 GB Package?

[#11]

A gaming package at 40Gb sounds OK to me. We'll be doubling our 20Gb limit to 40 anyway, but that'll cost us twice as much as we pay now, so if PN offered an actual package with 40Gb aimed at gamers, it'd probably be a bit cheaper, so we'd be up for it.

[#12]

Value 10GB@£9.99 for everyone Inc VAT...Gamer's Package 40GB@£19.99 Inc VAT for everyone..80GB Package with no gaming profile for everyone@£29.99 Inc VAT. Speed restriction's on the Gaming profile except for Gaming, That should be full line speed, And the 80GB has mild speed restriction's with no Gaming profile.

[#13]

Quote from: Dom

Aye, well it's to be expected. I'd gladly pay £30+ per month for fibre.

Here's the thing. You can get FTTC now with BT. Unlimited broadband and anytime phone for £27.99 per month! I would be very surprised if Plusnet can come anywhere near that.
Very tempting eh?
Will wait a lil' while longer to see how PN FTTC manifests itself before I make the jump.

[#14]

I very much doubt I'd get Fibre To The Anything knowing how far out in the sticks I live.

[#15]

I think that BT can do those deals because they will have a lot of users who just go to BT in ignorance that they could save themselves a lot of money by going elsewhere (or think that because their phone is with BT they have to also get their broadband from BT). These users may may only be using a handful of GB and are therefore subsidising the heavier users.
@Dom With my exchange the only fibre I'm likely to see for a long time is from the greengrocers!