Broadband ISP Plusnet Discounts UK Full Fibre Packages
UK ISP Plusnet has today moved to slightly sweeten the offers on their new range of cheaper Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) powered home ultrafast broadband packages – provided over Openreach’s national network, which sees the provider shaving a couple of extra pounds off each of the plans.
Customers of their full fibre service can expect to receive all the usual features, including unlimited data usage, a new Hub Two wireless router (based off BT’s Smart Hub 2), free activation and a 24-month minimum contract term. The catch is that these packages are data-only plans because Plusnet has yet to launch its own IP based phone (VoIP) style Digital Voice product.
However, the latest discounts only benefit PlusNet’s fastest 145Mbps and 500Mbps tiers, while their 74Mbps package for FTTP lines has actually increased in price from its launch position of £25.99 to £30 per month now (that’s the plan’s standard pricing). In addition, you also have to pay a £20 one-off activation fee on their 74Mbps tier, which is currently free on the fastest options.
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We should point out that customers on slower FTTC (VDSL2) lines can also take their “Unlimited Fibre” (36Mbps) and “Unlimited Fibre Extra” (66Mbps) packages from just £21.99 and £23.99 per month respectively – on a shorter 18-month term. But unlike their FTTP tiers, the FTTC plans also include a basic phone service. Plusnet also sells a super slow ADSL package, but we don’t write about those any more.
Plusnet’s Full Fibre Broadband Packages
Full Fibre 74
PRICE: £30 per monthFull Fibre 145
PRICE:£30.99£28.99 per month for the first 24 months (£35 thereafter)Full Fibre 500
PRICE:£40.99£38.99 per month for the first 24 months (£47 thereafter)
The provider also mentions both a 300Mbps and 900Mbps tier in the small print (post-contract prices of £40 and £55 respectively), but they don’t seem to be promoting these as an option to those who try to order one of their full fibre packages. But we do know that some existing customers were able to take them during the earlier pre-launch phase.
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.
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Not suprised, Plusnet’s FTTP offering at launch wasn’t that good. Its more competitive now though Vodafone is still a couple pounds cheaper. I suspect they’ve already lost quite a bit of the FTTP market.
They lost the market because even though they had FTTP Trials years ago, and never had a product you could order.
Now it’s going to be a hard sell for some people to stay with PN as there’s no digital voice package included.
Whole thing is a mess really. They should have done better.
Hilarious. The reductions are tiny (and the 74Mbps increase is huge) especially when compared with the numerous deals offered by the competition in many areas.
I thought Plusnet was supposed to be the “budget” brand?
It is budget, vs BT and EE. Not budget vs the altnet market.
@Matt.
Full Fibre 145 for £28.99, that is cheaper than the 150Mb/s Zzoomm offers for their 150Mb/s, sure Zzoomm is a bit faster, but would anyone notice and they do have a much faster upload, but again will people notice? Zzoomm is doing 6 months free at the moment, so that does bring the price down again. These prices are in contract prices, so once out of contract will change.
But they want to get people onto FTTP, but what real advantage would I have from coming from Plusnet FTTC at 36Mb/s to their 36Mbps Fibre Extra for £21.99 apart from maybe saving me a couple of quid a month and if they charge for installation then there is no great saving.
At the moment we don’t have openreach FTTP, but I think it is coming soon or will be when Openreach stops going on strikes, ZZoomm is also building around here, so I need to ask these questions, but as yet nothing have pursued me that I need FTTP.
@AD47uk
For me, I’d be asking how “critical” is your internet access.
FTTP not only brings lower latency, better down and up speed – but generally more reliability. If you have a wobbly VDSL line, it makes a huge difference.
If you’re in a heavily subscribed area, it can make a big difference too. (as VDSL takeup increased, service can decrease in not only speed but quality)
If someone digs through a fiber, BT are generally pretty sharp to get things fixed. (Obviously sometimes this can take a few weeks, but mostly the turn around is excellent)
With someone like Zzoomm (or any altnet) for me you’re risking a bigger “unknown” for your area as the network likely won’t have had many/any failures after it goes live.
Personally if given the chance between lower tier Zzoomm or BT, I’d be very tempted by Zzoomm – however if there’s next to nothing in it price wise, I’ve not been able to fault BT FTTP as a product and their FTTP support line has been solid.
The “would anyone notice the extra speed” type question… Depends on what you use the connection for. If you upload lots of files/photos to a cloud service – these will potentially finish much quicker, so yes. If you’re watching netflix and browsing email. No.
For Ref: I only have BT VDSL, BT FTTP and VM (FTTP) available here, no altnets are available. It’s one of those that
it’s one of those where “it depends” is going to be the answer regardless I think.
Not even cheap compared to Virgin either am on 300meg and only pay £26 a month full fibre
@Matt, I am not a games’ player, I will have a game of Left for dead now and again and even Mario kart on my Wii u, but they work fine with what I have, Media works fine as well, even 4K, I have not had a problem for a while now and even then, I just changed to a Huawei modem and all was fine.
I know broadband is the fourth utility these days, behind gas, electric and water, that is if you have gas, but if my broadband went down for a few hours, I am not that bothered, I will read, watch a DVD/blue-ray (remember them? ), listen to some music or do something else.
If I am in a heavy subscribed area, which I presume I am since I live on a large estate, when people start changing to FTTP, then FTTC will become less subscribed, so in theory should be better than ever, but I don’t get those problems, while I don’t test for speed all the time, every time I have done so, I have had more or less the same and the same ping.
When I had a problem I got in touch with plusnet and Openreach was here the next day, they could not fix the problem, sadly, and they were here for a few days trying to sort the problem out. I had sync only with a Huawei modem, nothing else would sync, even Openreach own equipment would not sync, even at the cabinet. It was very strange, so their advice was to keep the Huawei modem connected. plusnet sent me a Zyxel router, which did work for a couple of weeks and then lost sync. After a good 8 months I found everything works again, I have the hub 2 connected, but the Wi-Fi is awful.
If I was going for fibre and Zzoomm did a slower cheaper service, I may have thought about it, but since their minimum speed is 150Mb/s, and it costs £33 a month, then that is not going to happen. They may have a offer on for the first few months, but after that it will just go back up to £33, I don’t want to pay that much for broadband, I don’t want to £24 to be honest. If I was closer to the exchange and could get decent ADSL I would go for that, not plusnet, as they have put their ADSL up to the price of FTTC, not doubt to push people to FTTC, they all seem to be doing it now or putting the prices to almost match. I expect they will do that with FTTC and FTTP soon, to make it uneconomical for people to stay as they are.
My other half has fibre and until recently had 1Gb, but have reduced it down to around 70Mb.s or something like, and she doesn’t notice any difference. She lowered it down as she got fed up with paying stupid amounts of money for it, and she can afford to spend stupid amount of money.
If i got a faster connection, it would not make a difference to me, so I expect I will stay as I am as long as Plusnet gives me a good offer next year when the contract runs out, but then it is still ten months and anything can happen in ten months.
Difference in speed on their lowest package FTTP isn’t that much more than FTTC. Pricing is almost the same apart from the addition of a land line with FTTC.
Upload speeds are obviously better but most users won’t see this as a benefit.
I don’t see an incentive to move my parents over to FTTP at all at the moment unless I switch them to Vodafone
Very very bad
Full Fibre 74 shows up at £23.99 pm for my postcode.
Shame about the CPI + 3.9% price rise from March 2023.