Broadband contract

hans_2

Plusnet offer https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/


Is this an 18 month contract with nothing to pay for broadband at all?

Where's the catch?

forgotmyname

Looks that way, any caps on data usage though or throttling?

pappa_golf

looks good however in practice the "upto" 17mb is often misleading , and although in practice this is achievable , quite often when you do a line check on non fibre broadband it drops to a max of 5mb, unless you are on a basic ADSL setup , check the speed before committing to this

RumRat

You will only get whatever you get now in regards to speed over ADSL So the deal comes down to money (as ever). If the OP's intention is purely to save a couple a quid, it's a good deal and they won't lose out by changing.

Big_Graeme

The catch is you pay £16.99 a month for a phone line that will barely get used.

GunJack

Big_Graeme wrote: »

The catch is you pay £16.99 a month for a phone line that will barely get used.

Why?? It is used to supply the broadband service to your home!! Plus, I would suggest most people still make and receive calls with their home phone, and may want to add a call package option to the basic deal...

paddyrg

The line rental covers all the infrastructure of getting and maintaining (aging) wires to your home. You could look at 4G broadband if you didn't want to pay the line rental, however the costs are generally higher for data as the overhead has to be covered somewhere!

Big_Graeme

GunJack wrote: »

Why?? It is used to supply the broadband service to your home!! Plus, I would suggest most people still make and receive calls with their home phone, and may want to add a call package option to the basic deal...

Just pointing out that the headline price of free is not accurate.
I don't know anyone that uses their landline apart from getting calls from PPI companies.

pappa_golf

a call from a UK landline to a mobile phone that kicks in with an answer phone can easily cost you 28p (talk talk landline) however a call from a mobile can cost as little as 3p .


the only time my TT land line is plugged in , is when I have to ring TT on their free 0870 , with a BB fault.


we know that we are paying for maintenance of the system , however the typical standing charge for electricity and gas are often half the price of a phone line cost , gas and electricity standing charges are not rising at the same rate as telecoms


as for investments , in my area the top speed for fibre has dropped from 70 meg to 50 meg due to overselling , or situating the system , so I cannot see any investments?

ChiefGrasscutter

Have you any idea @pappa golf how much money will have been spent to upgrade your local cabinet to fibre based broadband so that you can now get 50 to 70Mbps from it?

Is it any wonder why those left out and still on ADSL2 from the exchange at a few Mbps with no hope of being upgraded for years to come get furious at those who have been upgraded, had money spent on them and who then have the 'front' to complain about some aspect of their mega fast service?

The drop from 70Mbps to 50 is caused by cable cross talk. As more and more users locally to you swap to superfast, the signal in the wires to your house interferes with adjacent lines in the same cable bundle to other houses and of course those other lines interfere with yours.
Cross talk is much more severe on VDSL fibre based BB than plain old ADSL due to the higher frequencies used.
This appears as excess 'noise' on your line so the router unit has to reduce the speed to compensate. It has nothing to do with "overselling".

As to maintenance costs and Line rental - try this
Cost of new pole outside house feeding three properties. Cost of pole £600 plus days work for BTOR. Probably £2500 all in. Now work out how many years line rental gross revenue let alone net profit from these three houses has been wiped out by this one repair.

forgotmyname

Big_Graeme wrote: »

I don't know anyone that uses their landline apart from getting calls from PPI companies.

Ahh you do not know me then

I no longer get PPI calls since adding teh call blocker, the phone rarely rings now, the only 2 people that call the house phone is my dad and one of the wifes sisters, everyone else calls on our mobiles.

About time we have a fibre BB deal without line rental that is not Virgin.