Broadband ISP Plusnet refreshes UK brand and introduces new mascot
Internet service provider Plusnet, which is often viewed as being the low-cost and no-frills broadband brand within the wider BT Group, has today refreshed their brand with a new website, logo and a mascot called Plusso. By the looks of things they’re still rolling this out as some of their old logo and pages are still active.
So far as we can tell this appears to be a largely cosmetic and usability focused facelift, which seems to have completely moved away from their historically Yorkshire-themed “no-nonsense” style marketing of the past. In order to celebrate this they’ve launched some new discounts and are offering a year of free broadband for 100 existing customers (it’s currently unclear how they can win this).
Otherwise, their Openreach based FTTP broadband packages currently start at £21.99pm for speeds of 145Mbps (30Mbps upload) on a 24-month term, which rises to £27.99pm for their 900Mbps (115Mbps upload) tier with a £75 Reward Card. All packages include a wireless router (Hub Two), parental controls and 24 months of internet security protection. Just remember that your monthly price will rise by £4 from April each year.
Advertisement
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
> Otherwise, their Openreach based FTTP broadband packages currently start at £21.99pm for speeds of 145Mbps (30Mbps upload) on a 24-month term[…]. Just remember that your monthly price will rise by £4 from April each year.
Would it be better to quote these prices as the average (mean) monthly price? i.e. the £21.99 per month package is £21.99 for 6 months, £25.99 for 12 months, and £29.99 for 6 months, so it would be fairer to describe it as “an average of £25.99 per month over the 24 month term.
This isn’t a dig at Mark, for the avoidance of doubt. I think the industry as a whole should be quoting prices like this now that mid contract price increases for consumer broadband are (a) normal and (b) completely predictable at the start of the contract.
I think that circles back to the argument about why mid-contract price hikes should just be banned. If we know what the hikes are in advance, then a simple single price for the contract should also be viable with those hikes baked-in.
> I think that circles back to the argument about why mid-contract price hikes should just be banned.
Well, that’s my personal view but I didn’t want to re-start that argument
> If we know what the hikes are in advance, then a simple single price for the contract should also be viable with those hikes baked-in.
Perhaps as the leading consumer broadband news website ISPr could start quoting the contract average price alongside the ISP “headline” price in these sorts of articles?
Taking this to the extreme, companies could start offering “Broadband for £1 per month!”
(*) increases by £25 per month every April
The problem with that is the average price all depends on when you order so it’s hard for ISP Review or any other site to quote an average. Order is Feb/March and the average is a lot higher than someone who orders on May for example.
Let’s not insult Mark’s intelligence. When he writes an article, calculating the average price with some reasonable assumptions (e.g. that the customer signs up and starts to be billed on the day of publication) is pretty straightforward. Comparison sites already show the total cost over the life of the contract (including one-off charges and mid-contract price increases), dividing that figure by the number of months in the contract is easy.
As a general rule I try not to interfere with pricing by offering my own twist, particularly as ordinary people are capable of calculating averages themselves.
The other problem is that some charges still aren’t transparent across all ISPs (e.g. router deliver and install fees that can vary by location) and prices may also vary depending on the link you follow, due to variations across affiliate networks and special offers etc.
Hence, I’ve tended to avoid the headache of averages due to all the differences we can’t always see without needing to run test orders on every single figure. The easiest approach is to just reflect the pricing ISPs give out at the time and try to mention potential caveats alongside.
The timing of this is interesting also given BT’s recent acquisition of TalkTalk where the CMA has delivered its report to the Secretary of State and now pending final decision. This new refreshing of the Plusnet brand could also be in preparation for taking on TalkTalk customers should the deal go ahead, as Plusnet seems to be the right place 🙂
I think you might be right. In fact the URL is currently diverting to an ‘Offers’ page that requires login – https://www.plus.net/talktalk
What URL is diverting to that? The normal Talk Talk url still goes to a Talk Talk page. BT have to be careful how they do this, certainly if the CMA is looking at it. Using this take over of Talk Talk to try to push people to BT, EE or Plusnet may be frowned at.
Talk Talk should stay separate and have nothing to do with BT other services at the moment.
Bt grabbed hold of Talk Talk for BT, not for anyone else.
Ad – BT can’t do anything until it is formally approved, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make preparations for it. Shifting TT customers to BT brands seems like an obvious part of the plan and no doubt made very clear to government when they agreed to rubber stamp it.
It is unlikely that BT’s going to make a profit on this deal and they would have preferred to avoid it entirely. But it is once again left to the national champion to act selflessly to avoid the enormous headaches that the industry and government would face had TT actually collapsed.
The mighty ZZzzzzzooozozozooooooooozmzm could have put in a takeover bid?
Hey Daniel and Ad47uk, good job on finding that link, I did an experiment trying other names with the same URL format only to be taken to a 404 page. The link you gave does indeed redirect to an “Offers” page, or more precisely an “Offers and upgrades” page, given it goes to this URL: https://www.plus.net/member-centre/offers-and-upgrades. Here is what I’m thinking may happen:
1) Given BT would be required to maintain existing TalkTalk customer contracts and with Ofcom, customers would be allowed to leave penalty-free if the pricing is changed, and it not making sense to continue the TalkTalk brand as Plusnet targets the same market, the Offers and upgrades page could be a landing page that would incentivise existing TalkTalk customers to migrate to Plusnet with an exclusive offer that would be better than what they already have (the new Plusnet brand refresh will of course play into this). This migration path would follow a similar approach to what BT did when Plusnet Mobile was being shut down, customers could leave penalty-free to a different provider or a link to a landing page on the EE website that had exclusive offers. In fact there is an exclusive offers page still working for existing Plusnet customers: https://ee.co.uk/mobile/plusnet-and-ee
2) The login page on Plusnet has a “Provider” box with a dropdown to choose between Plusnet, Force9 and Free-Online (previous ISP’s acquired by Plusnet). Given TalkTalk has their own login portal, could it be that this will transfer to Plusnet where “TalkTalk” becomes a new option in the dropdown menu? This would work if the TalkTalk login page is redirected to the Plusnet login page and BT is planning to maintain their existing logins
3) As mentioned above about it not making sense for BT to continue the TalkTalk brand, they may no longer offer new customers the ability to sign up to TalkTalk, and would instead be promoted to Plusnet, with TalkTalk remaining only for existing customers until their contracts expire with the Offers and upgrades page being the migration path. This would be a gradual phasing out of the TalkTalk brand
With the new refreshed Plusnet branding and the cool mascot that comes to life in the marketing videos, and if good offers are given to TalkTalk customers with a seamless migration that doesn’t put them off, I’m sure many will be more than happy to migrate, BT just has to execute this right. I’m sure they will as they seemed to have learnt their lesson when BT customers were being forced to migrate to EE that didn’t go down so well (Allera’s vanity project), I don’t think they will want to repeat the same mistake! There is also many out there who want the TalkTalk brand to disappear, myself included 🙂
Plusnet is the right place only for customer who do not take telephone. But it would make sense for the BT group to migrate TT customers to an existing group member, if only to shut down the TT IT systems.
@Ivor, Oh come on BT don;t do anything unless it suits BT, you really think we are to believe that BT did it out of the goodness of their heart? They expect to get profit out of this, and I don’t take that away from them, they are a business, that is what businesses do. I still don’t agree with it and I still think it needs to be looked into.
i thought you would have realised that even if Zzoomm wanted to take over Talk Talk, it would be difficult because Zzoomm don’t have anything to do with Openreach network and most of Talk Talk customers are on Openreach network.,
I thought you would have realised that, maybe you are not as clever as you think you are.
Hi DFScale, I agree but I do think BT has an opportunity to bring Digital Voice to Plusnet to accommodate TalkTalk’s landline customers and for existing customers of Plusnet who want a landline, rather than being directed to EE, as Plusnet and TalkTalk both target the budget-conscious. I don’t think TalkTalk customers would want to go to EE to maintain their landline that would mean paying more (same can be said for existing Plusnet customers, like R Walker who has commented on this article), knowing EE is targeted at the premium side, they are likely to go elsewhere! BT has to get their strategy right when they integrate TalkTalk,
TalkTalk TV is another thing they have to deal with, could they bring Plusnet TV back? BT will become majority owner of YouView (likely to see a potential acquisition in future so BT has full ownership of their own TV platform, which would be a net positive that would allow them to develop the platform quicker) 🙂
I see Plusnet are actually doing lower prices than BT again. A few months back, there was little difference between the two in terms of pricing.
So much for BT getting rid of Plusnet then as some people thought. Steven could be correct that they are doing this to try and get Talk Talk customers to stay in one way or another. As for the Yorkshire thing, not really been relevant to Plusnet for years.
Been a life long Plusnet customer but now moving to Vodafone as they ripped up my contract which runs to March 2027 and tried to push me to EE. Told them multiple times I don’t want to move to EE but they don’t listen. They are now charging me £20 because I’m leaving early, it’s just become a joke now, even though I’m leaving I’m still getting the EE stuff even in the post
Funny enough I just left (well Friday actually) left plusnet (well asked to) because I asked if I could get my broadband a bit cheaper as 28.99 a month for what 70mb broadband is a bit much which is a tad expensive for me considering they doing 900mb for 33.99 but full isht available where I am so I asked if I could get it down a bit they said no invited me to leave. Vodafone for me lot cheaper and price is more reason for part fibre so more than happy
Why are you being moved to EE?
Plusnet does not have Digital Voice (DV)
So the PSTN customers who wish to retain a phone line are being moved to EE that does have DV
This is part of the copper stop sell strategy
That is why customers are being moved to EE
I thought Plusnet Hub 2 got digital voice in the back? Don’t know why they say no to digital voice. Ask customer move to EE seem so strange!
100%. I can confirm this.
I have a friend who asked for DV when recontracting with Plusnet and they insisted that only EE was able to provide that service.
He chose to stick with Plusnet and is looking at AAISP for DV.
@phil, the routers may have the socket as they are BT routers, but they have a different firmware.
I preferred the firmware in Plusnet routers than the rubbish BT has, BT routers are bloated, so no doubt EE ones are as well.
Plusnet Hub 2 does indeed have a DV socket, but it is not functional.
I also chose to stick with Plusnet but chose Voipfone for the phone service. It cost me £65 for a Grandstream HT801 to plug into the back of the Hub 2, (and £4 for a cable with BT 431A plugs at either end), but the HT801 just needed to be plugged in and was auto-provisioned by Voipfone so I didn’t have to mess about configuring it.They handled the number porting quickly and efficiently so it was a relatively painless experience with no great technical experise required.
It still annoys me that I had to pay £64 for an ATA when the functionality actually exists in the Hub 2 !!
I am an old ASDL customer but I don’t want a phone service as already moved my number to VOIP. They still insist on moving me to EE for some reason.