UPDATE2 Plusnet Botch 38Mbps to 52Mbps Fibre Broadband “Upgrade”

Customers of PlusNet’s superfast Fibre Broadband (FTTC) packages, specifically their legacy ‘up to’ 38Mbps (20Mbps upload) subscribers, have been left in a state of frustration after the ISP’s plan to upgrade them on to the new ‘up to’ 52Mbps (10Mbps upload) tier didn’t go quite according to plan.

The “upgrade“, which occurred on 1st August 2016, was originally announced in June 2016 as part of Plusnet’s annual price rise (here). Unfortunately when Monday came the ISP had managed to lower the upload speed to 10Mbps as expected and yet the download rate somehow remained locked to the previous 38Mbps profile instead of pushing to 52Mbps.

A Spokesperson for Plusnet told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We are aware some customers due to receive our upgrade from their 40/20 package to 55/10 are not receiving the full download capacity. We’re currently investigating why this has happened and will continue to keep customers regularly updated.”

At present most of those on the ISP’s up to 38Mbps (20Mbps upload) service are actually making use of the more expensive 80/20 (UP/DL) wholesale FTTC product, albeit capped to the lower download speed of ‘up to’ 38Mbps. This is an odd choice given Plusnet’s low cost focus and partly explains why they wanted to adopt the cheaper 55/10 product, which would still give eligible subscribers a download boost but at the cost of upload performance.

However those who already received less than the headline download speed of 38Mbps would see no benefit from the new 52Mbps profile (it doesn’t magically improve the copper VDSL line itself), yet they would lose out on upload performance. Suffice to say that the announcement was not as popular as Plusnet might have hoped and botching the “upgrade” certainly hasn’t helped matters.

It’s worth pointing out that the original 38Mbps (20Mbps upload) Unlimited Fibre package was discontinued for new subscribers in 2015 and if you try to take the same package today then your upload rate will only be 2Mbps, which is based off the cheapest 40/2 FTTC product tier. Several related topics about the problematic upgrade can be found on Plusnet’s forum, including this rather lengthy one.

UPDATE 6:58pm

We did ask how long it might take to resolve, although Plusnet are currently unable to offer an ETA.

UPDATE 3rd August 2016

A Plusnet spokesperson has informed us that they’re “still working hard to resolve this issue and hope to have a fix in place soon,” which isn’t all that different to what they said yesterday.

UPDATE 5th August 2016

Reports are coming in that some customers are now seeing the expected 50Mbps download speed, although upload performance still seems to be a mix of 10Mbps or 20Mbps.