Introduction
This is pre-release of information about our April Product Refresh, which will start to be rolled out on the 29th March. The introduction of the revised products will continue throughout April. The content here is intended for customers and potential customers who are interested in all of the changes we are making, and in understanding the reasons behind our decisions. It should be clear however that nothing here can be regarded as ‘official’, until Press Releases are made and our websites updated. I would also point out that I may choose to update this post on the basis of any feedback, so please point people to this post rather than recreating it elsewhere.
While I have tried to be concise, there is a vast amount of information here. It is important to recognise however that the details here are very full, and will be communicated to all customers in simpler and less detailed fashion. Many of the issues discussed here will never impact more than 3 – 5% of our customers. The idea here is to provide a level of detail much greater than we have offered in the past when we have made product updates, but without the risk of confusing all of our customers. We have tried to pre-empt as many answers to potential questions as possible and we welcome all customer feedback in regards to our approach.
The Background
Designing our broadband network and the products we offer for sale has proven to be the most challenging aspect of life at PlusNet during the last few years. We have spoken in depth about the need for us to alter the design of our products in the past, in order to meet various demands. We understand from customers that they are frustrated about the lack of simplicity and clear direction within that product design, and the changes we are announcing here are aimed at addressing that.
As we enter a world where speeds approaching 8Mb will become the norm (without any reduction in our wholesale costs) and with a very clear desire that we don’t want to increase prices for any of our customers, we must now develop a new product design. This time we are confident that we can both improve and simplify our offers for all, as well as ensuring that everyone will receive an impressively faster service without any price increase.
Most importantly, we believe we now have a sustainable answer for the future. We are now entering a world where the appeal of Broadband has proved vastly greater than many anticipated. This is a world where PlusNet is poised to become one of the largest providers in the country, thanks to our low costs, intelligent use of new technology and attractive products. As a result, we have no need to plan for any further product updates (although of course it would be naive to try and guarantee this won’t happen). Hopefully though, the only changes we will need will be to respond to are future wholesale costing and LLU pricing improvements through increased allowances and better service offerings.
Faster Speeds mean…
The arrival of upto 8Mb/s connections nationwide will undoubtedly increase the speed at which our customers expect things to function. The reality however is that most services, such as web surfing, gaming etc, won’t be noticeably improved by the higher speeds. This is because there is already enough capacity with 2Mb/s (or less) to power a typical game, or surf a website. Most websites in fact load at exactly the same speed on a 512K connection as they do with 8Mb/s, simply because the speed of the remote server is limited. However, for file downloaders, 8Mb/s represents an ability to download a lot more data over a shorter period of time.
We will be providing all of our customers with a free upgrade to the fastest speed their line can support, upto 8Mb/s, but with this comes the need to ensure our network is protected from some types of usage, especially during peak times.
The future of our broadband products
The distinction we wish to make clear now is between the applications that people need to work well for them interactively, while they are sitting at their PC, and those which can be left to download in the background without supervision. The reality for most people is that whether a film takes three hours or six hours to download, you will not be sitting in front of your PC waiting for it to come. On the other hand, gaming, Internet phone calls, Web surfing etc all need to be fast and reliable, as and when they are needed.
The biggest change we expect to occur this year is the fast growth of legal content download services that offer video, films and music on demand. This includes developments such as the recent Sky by Broadband launch and a similar service from the BBC. Hand in hand with the growth of other applications, there is a risk that the amount of content downloaded through our network could swamp time sensitive traffic such as web surfing and gaming if left unchecked.
The saving grace here is that these new applications are not aimed at providing real time streaming, but designed for download and later viewing. The current broadband infrastructure simply does not lend itself to high quality streaming, and although the provision of 8Mb/s connections would present risks to peak time capacity for any ISP, if utilised intelligently there are plenty of possibilities for customers to make use of quieter times on our network to download plenty of this type of content.
Offering the best of both worlds
PlusNet has built a product set and network which is capable of delivering on our commitment to offer low cost, high quality broadband that suits the vast majority of consumers. By not imposing any set level of usage out of our peak hours when people are asleep or at work, we can allow customers to comfortably obtain their high volume content at a time when they don’t need to be interactively using their PCs. At the same time we can conserve our network resources to ensure no one sees slowdowns on the important services that matter to most of our customers at peak times.
Because no set level of acceptable use off-peak will be defined, we expect at times that our network will reach maximum capacity. When this happens we will employ our advanced prioritisation techniques to ensure that business customers, low users and everyone using services such as web browsing receive prioritisation, and means they will not normally notice an impact. At those times of full network utilisations, customers will receive a fairly distributed file download speed relative to their product type.
The easiest way to demonstrate how this works is visually. The graphs below show our current network utilisation for two protocols, over a 24 hour period:
This HTTP graph, representing mainly prioritised web surfing and web downloads, increases during our peak time, and drops off quickly as people go to bed. We prioritise Web surfing traffic like this to make sure people always get a high quality browsing experience.
As the Web traffic drops off, you can see Peer to Peer protocols like Bittorrent can get more bandwidth from the network, and as such people will see performance increases on these sorts of protocols during the night.
On these graphs, the negative values represent customer downloads, while the positive side is uploads from customers.
The Revised Product Details
This section covers the important changes being made as part of our April product refresh. I have not gone into too much detail here, but the information here should be more than enough for most people! Additional information will be provided to customers through further targeted communications, and our website, during the remainder of this month.
General Changes
These changes will apply to most, if not all of our products:
The standard 2Mb connection speed for all customers will be increased as part of the BT IPStream Max roll-out. Many people will receive a faster service for free. The trials have been successful and our customers achieved speeds on average of 6.1Mbit/s. It’s worth noting that speed increases will be much more noticeable at times when our network and BT’s network are less busy. We are dependent on BT to upgrade customer’s speeds and expect that this will take several months to complete. We will prioritise customers currently on ‘upto 4Mb’ and ‘upto 8Mb’ products. Following those customers we will upgrade other existing customers starting with customers who have been with us for the longest.
We will also be utilising LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) to deliver speeds of up to 24Mb when and where these become available. We are still trialling two suppliers for this, but we are now ready to offer a number of product options which will support these faster options, and have higher bandwidth allowances now.
As promised, the current peak time of 8am–Midnight will be changed to 4pm–Midnight in all cases.
There are revisions to our SUP (Sustainable Use Policy). The changes have been made to simplify the policy and ensure it strikes the correct balance for customers.
All customers will be given access to a PlusTalk product relevant to their product type. For some customers, this will provide a free of charge upgrade on their product worth up to £29.99 a month.
All data transfer allowances, including SUP, count usage on all protocols equally. We are no longer making any distinction between the types of traffic people are using.
Listed below are details of the major changes to each of our product ranges:
PAYG - Great value all round service suitable for all Internet applications, where customers can pay for additional bandwidth as required.
As well as the potential for upto 24Mb connections where available, the great news for PAYG customers is that we will no longer be charging for any overnight usage, so anything downloaded between Midnight and 8AM usage will be completely free of charge.
No specific fair usage figure will be placed on this overnight usage, but if the platform is full overnight then prioritisation will be implemented to ensure everyone gets a fair share of what is available.
Additionally, PAYG customers will get free access to the PlusTalk ‘Evening and Weekends’ product, worth £2.99 a month.
Plus –A Great value service for those who want fast email and web access, but not suitable for large file downloads.
Plus will only be offered to new customers as a single product, costing £14.99 a month and with speeds of upto 8Mb.
The current peak Time data transfer allowance will be changed from 5GB between 8AM – Midnight, to 3GB between 4PM and Midnight.
After this allowance is reached, usage restrictions will be applied to the account up to a 10GB peak time SUP limit which counts all traffic. Details of our new SUP policy are below.
Off-peak usage will not be counted, but this product will receive a lower priority than Premier, PAYG and Business customers during periods where the network is running at capacity off-peak.
Permanent rate limits are applied to common protocols used for large file downloads at all times (This is not a change).
Premier is Ideal for internet enthusiasts and gamers who use the internet more than the industry average. It provides fixed monthly rental with a higher usage allowance than many of our competitors
Premier will be offered with three options (Named ‘Options 1, 2 and 3’!)
Each option will have a data transfer allowance, which is not the same as ‘clean to’. As usage increases towards the product allowance, gradually increasing peak time speed restrictions will be applied to the connection (Details in the management section below).
Option 1 will be offered as ‘Up to 8Mb’ and replaces the current ‘Up to 2Mb product’. This will be provided with a peak time data transfer allowance of 15GB (Cost: £21.99 per month)
Option 2 will be offered as ‘Up to 16Mb’ and replaces the current ‘Up to 4Mb product’. This will be provided with a peak time data transfer allowance of 22.5GB (Cost: £29.99 per month).
Option 3 will be offered as ‘Up to 24Mb’ and replaces the current ‘Up to 8Mb product’. This will be provided with a peak time data transfer allowance of 30GB (Cost: £39.99 per month).
After the product allowance is exceeded, and before SUP (A much higher value than the product allowance) is reached, any peak time speed restrictions on standard protocols, such as Web browsing, gaming etc will not be set at less than 512K, ensuring that a Broadband experience can still be had.
Usage outside of the 4PM – Midnight peak period will not be counted towards any allowance, and off peak SUP will be removed completely. During off-peak periods where the network is running at capacity Premier Customers will receive a priority on our network appropriate to their account option.
Premier customers will be provided with PlusTalk anytime, worth £4.99 a month, free of charge.
Business - A range of broadband services for teleworkers, home based businesses and small and medium size business premises
We will be making a range of PlusTalk products available free of charge to Business and Teleworker accounts. We will also be upgrading customers lines to higher speeds.
Our business customers are important to us, and over the coming months we will be working to provide a number of business focussed product improvements including prioritised support in our CSC.
Management relating to usage allowances
On Plus and Premier accounts, the usage allowances represent the maximum amount of data that we expect a customer to transfer during the peak hours of 4PM - Midnight. As people approach their usage allowances we will apply stepped levels individual account management. This will be clearly communicated through tailored emails and information in the new View My Broadband System. Customers will be emailed when they are at 66% (10GB), 83% (12.5GB) and 100% of their usage allowances (Examples for Premier Option 1 – The others have equivalent values!). The email explains the changes in performance customers may see, and makes suggestions for how they can better utilise the allocations associated with their account (such as performing large file downloads off-peak).
The levels of management applied are designed to protect both our network at peak times, and also ensure that customers have less chance of accidentally exceeding the usage allowances. The speeds customers will see as they approach the allowance will be more limited on applications like File Sharing and Usenet, to the point where these applications become blocked during peak hours once the allowance is reached. Speeds will however remain relatively high for essential time sensitive applications like Web surfing, Gaming and Voip. The downstream speed on these protocols will never fall below 512K, meaning customers can continue to receive a great Broadband experience even after they have exceeded the usage allowance.
Details of revised Sustainable Usage Policy
The purpose of the SUP is to protect our network from excessive usage which is significantly outside the design of our products. We have now significantly simplified our SUP policy, and have removed the off-peak SUP levels altogether.
The SUP levels quoted below relate to ALL traffic and are extracted from our beta website (so please forgive the typo!):
Once someone has exceeded SUP, we would normally regard them as being a customer who has usage requirements that are not suitable for the product they are on. In the first instance where this occurs though, we will reset everything at the next billing date. On future occasions the SUP restriction will apply permanently, until the customer upgrades to a more appropriate product.
New VMBU
As part of the product refresh, we will be updating the View My Broadband Usage tool. Below is a sneak preview of some of the new pages. We have developed a more easy to understand summary page, as well as a detailed usage page that shows just where the data is being used. We know no ISP is close to providing this level of detail to customers!
They are just examples though, so please ignore the test data and obvious typo
And Finally… An FAQ (Feel free to suggest more questions)
Why not just add more capacity to your network?
It’s not just down to cost, although based on our product design it is obvious that adding more capacity could force subscriptions higher or individual usage allowances lower. The other problem with adding capacity at the moment is that the network design is not advanced enough to prevent that from simply being utilised by a small handful of P2P users and the people using tunnelling – Another pipe really would not make much of a difference to performance right now. We are very close to our product design now, so capacity will certainly be added in line with any growth in the size of our customer base.
Will off-peak usage be Unlimited?
No - We are not making an Unlimited off-peak usage guarantee or statement, and the fact we don’t count usage here should not be regarded as the same thing. No ISP can sustainably offer true unlimited broadband in the UK. We wholly expect that during this year, our network will become fully utilised under these policies. At that point prioritisation will be performed to ensure time critical applications remain responsive. Business accounts will be prioritised at all times, as will web surfing and other sorts of usage that rely on a fast connection. Because most people are asleep at night and at work in the day however, most of our network will be available for downloads and we are happy that the technology will enable available bandwidth to be split fairly between all users without the need to specify a usage limit.
Will you still 'manage' users?
We recognise that there will always be a handful of users who chose to use our product in a way far in excess of how it was designed. We do not want to unfairly punish these users, however we will take measures against customers who deliberately work around our traffic management techniques and who do not respond to our requests to change their usage habits. Our network infrastructure will be constantly updated to search for and deal with attempts to take an unfair advantage and customers far exceeding product design (at the 30GB SUP level for example) will be offered the opportunity to upgrade their product or find a new ISP.
Does this affect me?
None of the discussions we have had on this subject will directly affected more than 5% of consumers. Average customer usage is less than 5GB at peak times on Premier 2Mb. So you can see that a 15GB usage allowance before ‘advanced’ protocols are blocked is far more than the vast majority of customers need.
Is this a cap?
Very clearly not. A cap is where customers have to pay more for usage, or alternatively their connections stop working entirely after a limit is reached.
Will I be able to pay extra for more data transfer?
Yes. If you need more or faster data transfer, later this year we plan to be in a position to offer a pay as you use level of ‘platinum’ traffic. This will take maximum priority across our network, and will allow customers to purchase a guaranteed level of quality at any time. This might cost for example ~£1 per GB.
With Regards,
Ian
New PlusNet Announcment!
- Thread starter Nathan
- Start date
Hmmm not good enough for us no more by the looks of things.
Offpeak now 4pm - 8am
10 gig cap on peak time before you get hit with throttling.
ALL traffic counts towards SUP
Only good thing by the looks of it is your connection wont drop below 512k for gaming and surfing which is good.
Once you hit 15 gig on peak, p2p and usenet is BLOCKED
They are also saying offpeak is no longer unlimited + it could be throttled (plusnet could = WILL)
I ll be requesting my MAC end of the month.
Offpeak now 4pm - 8am
10 gig cap on peak time before you get hit with throttling.
ALL traffic counts towards SUP
Only good thing by the looks of it is your connection wont drop below 512k for gaming and surfing which is good.
Once you hit 15 gig on peak, p2p and usenet is BLOCKED
They are also saying offpeak is no longer unlimited + it could be throttled (plusnet could = WILL)
I ll be requesting my MAC end of the month.
Soldato
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what a rip off. I sincerely hope my ukonline llu service doesn't introduce caps like this!
I dont understand why they dont just buy more capacity. They are clearly VERY greedy shareholders. They also said it is now EASIER to understand, it may be perhaps a little clearer but still confuses me with all these options and thorttling.
Seems completely understandable to me, if a bit long, but of course, every time an ISP makes a change like this, everyone starts moaning.
Yes, PN do cram users in to the pipes more than others, but that comes with the charging structure they use (I know web hosting providers who do the same). If you want a less contended service, then a MAC code and new ISP is undoubtedly the way to go.
Personally, I'm staying put, but then I'm on the business side of the network and thus have avoided pretty much all of the recent problems. My only beef is with them treating SSH as a P2P app, and I have the agreement of one of the senior CSC guys on that.
Even the likes of Zen, longtime favourite around here, are now introducing caps.
Yes, PN do cram users in to the pipes more than others, but that comes with the charging structure they use (I know web hosting providers who do the same). If you want a less contended service, then a MAC code and new ISP is undoubtedly the way to go.
Personally, I'm staying put, but then I'm on the business side of the network and thus have avoided pretty much all of the recent problems. My only beef is with them treating SSH as a P2P app, and I have the agreement of one of the senior CSC guys on that.
Even the likes of Zen, longtime favourite around here, are now introducing caps.
I'm with force9 (same company) and to be honest i can't see any problem with setting my BT client to not work between 4pm and 12am if i have it running, at least i will stiil be able to browse and game without any problems. The fact that they are extending the off peak hours and also removing the usage limits for the off peak times should be favourable with the download community as they have been given double the amount of time to cain the bandwidth basicaly. As far as i am concerned i shall be staying with F9 as they have always provided me with good service and backup.
On Plus and Premier accounts, the usage allowances represent the maximum amount of data that we expect a customer to transfer during the peak hours of 4PM - Midnight.
Usage outside of the 4PM – Midnight peak period will not be counted towards any allowance, and off peak SUP will be removed completely.
That looks to me like theyre controlling quite strictly peaktime activities but removing the off peak limits, trouble is with +net it may look one way and then be another
didnt see a mention as to which category 8am-4pm hits though or is that just off-peak too 
as always with +net
Usage outside of the 4PM – Midnight peak period will not be counted towards any allowance, and off peak SUP will be removed completely.
That looks to me like theyre controlling quite strictly peaktime activities but removing the off peak limits, trouble is with +net it may look one way and then be another
didnt see a mention as to which category 8am-4pm hits though or is that just off-peak too as always with +net
I'm lucky I left tbh. The plusnet staff, well those on their forums can't even make up their minds as to when it's ok to schedule downloads. I used to read there but quickly realised that none of the staff were exactly too sure about their policies. They change their T&C's too much to even keep track.
Personally I think this is a really good move on PNs part. It is no longer confusing anyway.
One peak time, if you wish to use P2P or Usenet, do so between midnight and 4pm when there is no limit.
Also going to 8Meg from 2Meg is good.
10 Gig should be plenty for gaming / surfing between 4pm and Midnight.
I'll stick around a little bit longer at least...
One peak time, if you wish to use P2P or Usenet, do so between midnight and 4pm when there is no limit.
Also going to 8Meg from 2Meg is good.
10 Gig should be plenty for gaming / surfing between 4pm and Midnight.
I'll stick around a little bit longer at least...
Im a way im hacked off, but in a way im happy. We are now on 3GB a month cap, so my dad has eventually decided we ARE changing ISPs, i didnt even have to argue 
Going to wait until 8mb is up and running then ditching them for something better. Im hoping Demon on NewNet, but we shall have to wait and see.
Going to wait until 8mb is up and running then ditching them for something better. Im hoping Demon on NewNet, but we shall have to wait and see.
It's one thing to start complaining about caps, but if you expect to be able to hop around onto ISPs which don't have caps, you're going to run out of options very soon. If people stop treating their shared connections as leased lines then we wouldn't be in this situation.
I do wonder what's going to happen when we start seeing iptv and the likely use of p2p type software to transfer it, i think isp's should give the option for capping with reasonably priced amounts and throttling certain things at different times.
Radiation said:
Well by then Plusnet will have changed there usage policy a few more times I suspect.
It is at least clearer this way, for now. The old system was almost laughable.
OLD SYSTEM:
Download anything between midnight and 8am (100 gig limit)
Download 20 gig of usenet traffic per month between 8am and midnight
Download 100 gig per month
Download 30 gig per month between 4pm and midnight.
NEW SYSTEM:
Download up to 15 gig Peak Times (4pm-Midnight)
Download anything with no limit between Midnight and 4pm.
As soon as I can get my domain names off elsewhere, I'm off to another ISP. I can't stand the traffic shaping - I'd much rather go somewhere where I have a fixed cap, but don't have any throttling. Much more convenient, especially as I rarely use more than 30-50Gb/month.
Nathan said:
Not greedy at all, just facing a few realities.
The numbers will have changed a bit with MaxDSL I'm sure, but the position used to be that the break-even point for a 50:1 IPStream line was around 10-12GB per month, many ISP's had higher limits and the large number of low use customers covered the minority of high use customers.
Unfortunately with the rise in line speeds and the approach of new download services like the Sky one that will encourage low volume users to consume more bandwidth, there will be fewer and fewer low users to off-set the high users.
Going to have to get used to this sort of thing to be honest, and don't expect to be able to carry on finding uncapped ISPs to move to for much longer.
Caged said:
Im not complaining about caps, im complaining about plusnet, they started off as really good, then they limited P2P which i didnt mind, then they killed usenet speeds, then they introduce a 5GB cap without telling anyone, then they totally remove binary usenet, and then they change the caps to 3GB as 8mb comes in, all in the space of about 3 month. Fun eh.
. I know everywhere will end up capped, but if plusnet cannot provide me with the 10gb of useage i use every month without complaining then i start to worry.
Aye, its looking like its going to be the norm on all but LLU/Cable type arrangements.
Shame really, I personally think its going to have a negative impact on the take up of things like BBC IMP, Sky by Broadband and who knows what else in the next few months/years.
I have put my order in for 8 meg probably the same as a lot of people will be doing regardless of the caps, my only grumble with the Zen product is the lack of provision for even a throttle to 256k or something, so I will have to keep an eye on things hope I dont run out of broadband while VPNing into work out of hours etc
Another thing you would have to be careful of is getting stung by a worm or something, you could loose traffic allowance left right and centre if you dont keep yourself protected IMO.
Shame really, I personally think its going to have a negative impact on the take up of things like BBC IMP, Sky by Broadband and who knows what else in the next few months/years.
I have put my order in for 8 meg probably the same as a lot of people will be doing regardless of the caps, my only grumble with the Zen product is the lack of provision for even a throttle to 256k or something, so I will have to keep an eye on things hope I dont run out of broadband while VPNing into work out of hours etc
Another thing you would have to be careful of is getting stung by a worm or something, you could loose traffic allowance left right and centre if you dont keep yourself protected IMO.