UK broadband and phone provider Plusnet – those of the “good honest broadband” adverts – have just launched a new fiber optic broadband service offering 76Mb download speeds, called Extra Fibre. As broadband speeds in the UK get faster and faster, we though it was a good idea to speak to their Senior Product Specialist, Dave Tomlinson, about the future of UK broadband and Plusnet’s plans in particular.
Plusnet have just launched their latest fiber optic broadband product, Extra Fibre Broadband, offering download speeds of up to 76Mbps and upload speeds of up to 19.5Mbps. Just how fast do you think fiber optic broadband can get and how do you set the speeds of your product offerings?
We provide the maximum speed to enabled areas at this moment in time. Our FTTC currently offers up to 76Mbps/s which has doubled the speeds within our own product range this year alone. Plusnet is also currently trialling 300Mbps on FTTP.
There are currently around 20 exchanges across the UK that are enabled to deliver these speeds at the moment but we will continue to trial faster connections as we await more availability nation-wide. The underlying technology used have the ability to go even faster still, 1GB broadband is not entirely a dream.
Is the future of UK broadband fiber optic or will another innovation come along? And are Plusnet working on anything in this area (that you can reveal!)?
The immediate future sees a lot of investment in fiber optic broadband with BT investing £2.5 billion into FTTC and FTTP broadband services. BDUK funding are committed to delivering the best superfast broadband network in any major European country by 2015. Meanwhile the evolution of 4G networks is likely to compliment the fix line services, like 3G and WiFi does now.
12 years ago if you were lucky enough to get broadband – you’d get 0.5Mbps, which would be plenty to do everything you wanted to do. Today we’re launching an up to 76Mbps product with the future in mind for what people are going to use their connection for. From our direct conversations with customers we know Fibre is revolutionising people’s Internet habits. In a recent Plusnet customer survey 57% of respondents who had been trialling our up to 76Mbps product said the Internet had become more integral to their lifestyle than it was before. Given the improved broadband connection, a third of people were looking to purchase further smart devices or computers, a third were looking to purchase a broadband enabled TV set and another third were even thinking of hardwiring broadband throughout their home.
Do you see the use of cloud services like iCloud and Google Drive increasing much in the next five years, and if so how will this affect broadband usage?
iCloud and Google Drive offer services that seamlessly connect; it happens in the background and so you don’t notice the difference over your connection. We’ve certainly seen usage increasing especially where cloud services benefit the end user’s experience, for example taking a photo and instantly uploading to your PC.
Upload bandwidth has slowly been increasing since the launch of these services however; the focus still remains on downloading. That said, we’ve introduced faster uploads on Fibre products in the last month and 45% of our Fibre trialists said they valued increased upload speeds with the new products.
Broadband usage is one of the key differentiators between ISPs and broadband products, average usage is only going to go up. Having said this, the majority of customers never reach their usage limits on a monthly basis.
Fibre broadband – because of the increased usability it offers and often dramatic increases in speed (we’ve seen customers’ speeds going from less than 1Mbps to above 70Mbps). This inevitably means people use more bandwidth and we’ve seen this with our own customers, with 45% of our fiber trialists confirming they are using their home broadband for more than five hours a day. Meanwhile, 59% said they were watching more on-demand TV and over half said they were undertaking more free streaming.
We’ve recognised the changes and the increased demand for bandwidth by introducing a new Fibre product with double the usage limit.
We’re constantly evolving our product spec based on the direct conversations we have with our customers on our community site and online forums. We regularly engage our customers to trial new products and services. So it’s safe to say, you’ll see new things from Plusnet over the course of the next 12 months…but my lips are sealed (for now).
Where do you stand on net neutrality?
Net Neutrality is becoming an increasingly important consideration as more and more businesses and innovations are reliant on a good quality internet connection. We signed up to the Open Internet Code of Practice in support of this earlier this year.
Conversations around Net Neutrality often follow on to raise concerns around the use of Traffic Management devices, technology which Plusnet is well known for and proud to be associated with.
We want our customers to have the best broadband experience possible. Our philosophy is to ensure that applications with time sensitive requirements, such as VoIP or gaming are always protected. When people start using Skype and FaceTime we want to ensure they run smoothly in the home – even when someone else in the house starts web browsing or streaming a TV show.
Traffic management ensures our customers get a reliable home service. As customer numbers and usage grows, we have to increase the capacity of our network to make sure there’s enough bandwidth for everyone. When the network is busy, it would be easy for things to get out of control. Peer-to-peer, video streaming and large file downloads can flood the network quickly and use up the bandwidth.
It’s easier to explain the benefits when you look at a high demand event, something like World Cup qualifier played overseas, which means here in the UK we’re watching it during work hours, can accrue a great deal of interest. If thousands of people are watching the football online, mainly at work, the network can get really busy. If every user on the network receives their service at the same rate, certain activities will become impaired. Configuring traffic means we can prioritise traffic like VoIP and business VPN so that is carries on working without problems.
It’s about preserving the time-sensitive activities that need the prioritisation because there is a lot of web traffic such as email and surfing where you just won’t notice the connection speed, regardless.
How do you think Plusnet’s product offerings stand up against the competition – I’m thinking BT and Virgin Media specifically, but other, smaller companies too?
Last month we were Which? recommended for the third time running. We continue to outperform our competitors with customer service and reliability and we’re delivering new products at market leading prices.
What one sentence would you use to convince people to switch/ join to Plusnet?
We don’t believe you should compromise on service just to get a good deal, we offer both and I think this appeals to customers when broadband at home is becoming more and more integral to our lives.
Plusnet has received criticism for their 10GB and 60GB usage limits, the former being too low and the latter too high. Compared to other ISPs who offer 20GB as standard it does seem to be a bit restricting at the lower end and rather too much at the top end – how do you respond to this?
Greater usage is becoming more important to Fibre customers with faster speeds and we’ve reflected this need by increasing the usage on our Extra Fibre product. The fact remains that on copper, the majority of customers stay well within their usage limits.
We don’t think 60GB is too high – it gives the majority of customers a good buffer room before they get anywhere near the 60GB limit. Unlike our competitors we offer free overnight usage from midnight-8am (every day) meaning that your 10GB can go quite a long way if you schedule usage overnight. A lot of customers on our 10GB products who want more tend to use this to their advantage and download more than some customers on the 60GB product.
Interesting stuff, especially on Net Neutrality and usage limits. While we at TechDrink can understand the need for traffic management, especially at the moment, we do believe that companies like Plusnet should be working with each other to increase capacity to the point where it just isn’t required. For now though, it seems it is a necessary evil.
Plusnet, meanwhile, continue to be one of the better broadband companies in the UK, evidenced by the recommendation from Which? and also comments by their customers. But they’re not perfect – which company is?
Looking to the future, the dream of 1Gb broadband in the hone is certainly not a pipe dream, though how it will be delivered – fiber optic or something else – remains undiscovered, or at least Plusnet aren’t saying if they’re already working on it!
