Plusnet pull out of Binary Usenet service

[Stellios]

Taken fresh from plusnet customer service announcements, from April 3rd anyone on plusnet wanting to use binary newsgroups will have to pay for their own service.

It has become apparent from customer feedback and from our own testing that our existing Usenet (newsgroups) infrastructure is no longer meeting the needs of those customers using this platform for binary downloads.

This is also coupled with the fact that there has been a huge upsurge in binary Usenet postings recently. For example Giganews have reported a 15% growth in binary Usenet postings within the last 30 days alone and are predicting that this will continue. Our news platform was never designed to cope with these sorts of volume, and it is clear that we would need to make significant ongoing investments in order to offer a reasonable quality binary feed.

We have investigated a number of options for better Binary provision, including re-design of our server configuration, equipment upgrades and outsourcing to a third party provider. At this stage however, we have been unable to source a sustainable and financially viable alternative. The binary Usenet service will be withdrawn from April 3rd 2006.

Therefore the decision has been made that it would be better to focus our existing investment in hardware on the provision of a text-only newsgroup service. As a result of the lower load on the same resource, and the extra redundant storage, this text service will deliver exceptional performance and will prove a reliable offering for all of our customers in the long term.

We understand that a number of customers who use Binary newsgroups will be disappointed by this step but we hope people will understand the reasons for this change and that many will benefit from a higher quality text feed, rather than a limited and incomplete binary feed.

 

[OllyM]

Yet another move by Plusnet that makes them even less worth touching.

 

[iamgud]

You have to imagine the cost of a newserver. Especially when 90% of traffic is generated by illegal binary downloads....

It would be a case of spending £1000s and jacking up the price of ADSL or just make the people who want binaries pay. Making those that leech binaries 24/7 pay is a much fairer aproach imo.

Even Zen have had to change the wording on the Website to basicly saythe news server it is a best effort service. But having said that it works fine for me, full speed 99% of the time.

 

[OllyM]

Zen's senior network staff have stated that their usenet platform is cost neutral, for various reasons, including the fact that they don't have to pay for transit to external usenet providers.