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Free-Online & BT Openzone

craigyb00gb
Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: ‎11-10-2007

Free-Online & BT Openzone

Hi,
After an announcement a while ago that we would start to see BT services becoming available to PlusNet/Free-Online customers I am disappointed in how slow any progress has been made. I am, however, even more disappointed that even after the website merge I still can't get a BT Openzone account through my Free-Online username. This has been available to PlusNet users for a while now. Why can't Free-online users get anything?
Is there a timetable to make Openzone available to Free-Online users? When can we expect to see more BT products become available?
Kind Regards,
Craig
4 REPLIES 4
Ianwild
Grafter
Posts: 3,835
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Free-Online & BT Openzone

Hi Craig,
We are all a bit disappointed about how long the BT products we plan to offer are taking to get out of the door. We are making every possible effort to deliver these, but for various reasons nothing is happening very quickly at the moment.
In terms specifically of Openzone access, I must confess that we de-prioritised this mainly because so few people use our existing product. The problem we have is that the wholesale Openzone product we originally resold doesn't have the same roaming agreements in place that the Retail Openzone product does (eg the cloud and others). As such it's a somewhat inferior product and not as attractive as going ot BT direct to buy Openzone.
What with the recent Fon announcement from BT, our plan now is to work on relaunching this service using the retail rather than the wholesale product, incorporating all of the latest developments. We are in active discussion with BT Retail on this at the moment.  At the point we do that, I can assure you all of our customers will be able to take advantage of the whole product. As it is though I don't have a timescale, although nothing is likely before next year.
If there is anything else you are interested in, please let me know and I will do my best to provide an update. The more people that express an interest in things like this (And be specific about what you need please!), the more impetus that gives us to prioritise these items above other deliverables.
Regards,
Ian
pjmarsh
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 4,035
Thanks: 1,579
Fixes: 20
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Free-Online & BT Openzone

I have used this on my PlusNet account a couple of times, but most of the areas where I'd want to use it are through the cloud, so I'd very much welcome a change on this.  Thanks for the update Ian.
Phil

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.

Simon_M
Grafter
Posts: 685
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Free-Online & BT Openzone

Quote from: Ian
In terms specifically of Openzone access, I must confess that we de-prioritised this mainly because so few people use our existing product. The problem we have is that the wholesale Openzone product we originally resold doesn't have the same roaming agreements in place that the Retail Openzone product does (eg the cloud and others). As such it's a somewhat inferior product and not as attractive as going ot BT direct to buy Openzone.

That there is so little take up strikes me as a reason for making it a priority, (or at least it's replacement), rather than the reverse. Certainly without a roaming agreement that includes the Cloud as an absolute minimum, there never is going to be any interest. Wi-fi as a subscription service is never going to take off until all the major players get together & agree that a subscriber only needs to pay one subscription.
I'm ready to sign up as soon as there is a usable service.
Ianwild
Grafter
Posts: 3,835
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Free-Online & BT Openzone

[quote author
That there is so little take up strikes me as a reason for making it a priority, (or at least it's replacement), rather than the reverse.
Well, I could use the same argument for the 25 or so things currently vying for our attention. We have a roadmap and set of priorities which more and more will be driven by the customer feedback we have. Right now it's big stuff - fixing email properly, Voice over IP, web hosting, stabilisation of existing services etc. We've made a lot of progress on most of the areas already but there is more to do before we embark on new projects.
Expect to see further updates in the next few weeks.
Ian