I'm glad there has been a lengthy explanation about the Broadband
Plus "product design", and how the acceptable use in peak (0800
to midnight) hours is flexible but currently around 6 GB amonth.
For anyone who has not seen it, ADSLguide has a posting here:
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...Number=2219350
and Stew Norriss from Plus.Net has a separate thread for the
further discussion of aspects resulting from that post.
It really is a shame that staff at Plus.Net won't all be 'up to speed'
on the significant aspects until Monday, as there'll be a number of
customer who have noticed poor service speeds and might be wondering
what has happened, and there's no sure way they will get a sensible
answer - witness Gerry's comments:
"For me I had to chase them to find out why I was having
slow speed. Took 4 different attempts before I was told
that I was on a static IP and being throttled."
As it will be like that over the weekend, so I have not even bothered
to ask via Contact Us if my account is being 'managed' (I know it used
to stream OK, whereas it now takes an hour to get 10 minutes of video
to 'play' before it fails and now I get FTP failures - it stalled on
file 2 of 8 for an update to some bit of software... Seems to have
been affected since before Christmas... with no suggestion coming
from Plus.Net that it was (or has) been done. Taking bets on how
long before any e-mail notification arrives...
In plusnet.service.customer-feedback Marksfish wrote:
> And they told us porkies at the customer forum too Peter. One of the
> questions I specifically asked was about limits and the answer was that
> there are none and there were no intentions of them being introduced
> because of the severe throttling on the account.
I find it odd that there's any need for such severe throttling, now that
the peak time 'flexible limit' has been suggested. It is all the more
galling to see the example given of someone using the service to be OK
to download 10 x MP3s off iTunes, when that could probably just fail,
if one tried to use their "as good as the best alternative ISP's"
Usenet News service.
I can understand them limiting the number of concurrent connections, and
even putting a cap on how much Usenet traffic is delivered at full speed
(on Premier), but the proposed 15 GB upper limit on using Plus.Net news,
and perhaps a significantly lower limit (I'd be happy with 2 to 5 GB as
I have hardly downloaded anything from Usenet via Plus.Net in at least
6months, given the crummy nature of access) for Broadband Plus could
have prevented abuse by anyone, and allow a two-tier approach, too.
I guess they've spent the last 8 months fussing over these Gold / Silver
etc queues, not setting up a quota system for Usenet that works, and if
there has been work done, I bet they didn't think to allow lower quota
limits for Broadband Plus so users could get a reasonable speed and
not have articles expire before they could be downloaded!
With taking over Metronet (which had been offering up to 2x 128 kbps
links for downloading news, to reduce the effects of very heavy users)
I had hoped Plus.Net might see a way to use an external news service
which is reliable, with suitable limiting to stop 24x7 max use traffic
abuse, and then their binary news problems with the internal service
would be nil.
Clearly Plus.Net is looking to limit everyone's service (the comments
back in the spring of 2005, about users possibly being able to d/l up
to 400 GB off-peak, for example, were just marketing hype), and quite
how the staff will brush under the carpet the previous reversals of
policy will be down to their conscience (or depends on taking on a
series of new customer service agents who nothing of past promises,
so they cannot be blamed for the forever changing user 'experience'
that those who stick with Plus.Net will have to endure).
I've certainly 'tested the water' or 'pushed the envelope' on the a/c
(my usage was 77 GB in October, ~50 in November, ~30 in December) and
in part it was to see if I'd get a warning (none came, of course, but
the connection I have now seems crippled - understandably, to quite a
degree, but since mid December, perhaps earlier, and a long delay in
terms of openly informing the customer about changing their service)
but the most I got on my ticket complaining about speed of Usenet
was the 'access to Usenet is possible but not guaranteed'...
I was 'making the point' that there was plenty enough spare bandwidth
and the crippling they did to Usenet was OTT... no request to me to
moderate my use (I did anyway, it was to 'make a point' after all)
but then I pay a fee to access a service and at least 1/3 of that
fee has been wasted as downloading and streaming is now impossible
via my Plus.Net connection...
If Plus.Net had responded to uses back in August / September / October
with some better guidelines on how the account was constrained, this PR
gaff would not have happened but we've seen it before, and no doubt it
will come again...
From 2005-07-27
http://www.adslguide.org/newsarchive.asp?item=2314
"We should have told our customers about this change before we
implemented it, and I would like to sincerely apologise to all
of our customers for this breakdown in communications.
In order to offer great value and great performance, we will
make changes and improvements to our services. Before we make
changes and improvements from now on, I would like to personally
assure customers that we will always be as open, honest and
upfront as possible."
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...Number=2219350
"It was our intention to send this email to all affected customers.
However, the development of this wasn't effectively managed and
some customers were affected by network management before they
were emailed."
I wouldn't mind, but there has been a consistent failure to address
questions about the 'product design' for Broadband Plus not for just
weeks, but months, whether made in posts on p.s.customer-feedback
where one might expect candid responses from Plus.Net staff, or
in other places.
I know from bitter experience that asking an awkward question in
'contact us' can lead to having access to the portal blocked (and
with it, any access to past tickets, billing or other a/c services)
so I have not done more than query the poor speed of Usenet news,
and even for that, did not push it, because of previously losing
my access (it was a query regarding payments, not technical to do
with the speed/servers/service, which got my access blocked).
I could upgrade to the Premier account but see the 'how you use it'
being "managed" in detail over the next year or two, and as for how
things will change with 8000 kbps service, that's anyone's guess!!
Plus.Net certainly seems to have gone from "download, within reason,
what you like, when you like" to "download, with a maximum of XX GB
during 0800-0000 if using Usenet/peer-to-peer/FTP, a max of YY GB
in total, oh, and don't bother with VoIP from anyone else" :-)
Peter Morgan.
cross-posted to uk.telecom.broadband
(potential users need to know what existing users and Plus.Net staff
are thinking, and non-customers cannot see the posts in the Plus.net
customer-feedback group very easily, if at all.)
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