ISP Plusnet UK to Close Down John Lewis Broadband Division UPDATE

Budget UK ISP Plusnet, which is part of the wider BT Group, has announced that from today it will no longer be providing managed broadband and phone services to new residential customers under the John Lewis brand and the service will eventually close.

The move appears to form part of the BT Group’s new branding strategy and their work to turn EE – over time – into their “flagship brand for our consumer customers” (here). As part of that, we recently reported (here) that the CEO of BT’s Consumer division, Marc Allera, had put the future of their low-cost sub-brand, Plusnet, under assessment. But at the time, we didn’t know quite what that would mean.

The first hints of the answer to that question came this morning after the broadband ISP division of high street retailer John Lewis, which is provided via a managed solution from Plusnet, updated the front page of their website to announce that the service would be closing (this has no impact on Plusnet’s own broadband packages).

The change does not currently impact existing JLB customers, although the FAQ page on their website suggests that they’ll eventually be encouraging customers to move their accounts over to Plusnet. At present, it’s unclear whether existing customers will also be given the option to switch to a different (non-BT) ISP without penalty.

Statement on John Lewis Broadband Site

Thank you for choosing John Lewis Broadband.

This service is currently provided by Plusnet, who are part of BT Group. Moving forward though, John Lewis will be closing its broadband service.

We’d like to reassure you that there won’t be any immediate changes to your service, and there’s no need for you to do anything yet. We’ll be in touch about your options, with plenty of time ahead of your service ending.

A Plusnet spokesperson said:

“Plusnet and John Lewis have worked together for over 10 years to provide a John Lewis Broadband service.

John Lewis have decided to close this Plusnet provided service, with new customers no longer being accepted. As existing John Lewis Broadband customers near the end of their contract, we will be in touch to explain what the changes mean for them and how the Plusnet team can support them.”

The bad news, even for existing customers who eventually move over to Plusnet, is that those who made use of the JLB associated email addresses (e.g. @john-lewis.com, @greenbee.net or @waitrose.com) “will no longer be able to use” them as they’ll be closing those down too. “We recommend you start to look at other email services, like the popular free options from Gmail or Outlook.com,” said JLB. Naturally, BT don’t own the rights to those domains.

We will update this story again later, once BT has responded to our request for a comment. We’ve also heard that Plusnet’s own business products may eventually be impacted by the branding changes too, but this has not yet been confirmed.

UPDATE 12:38pm

We’ve added Plusnet’s statement above. The operator added that, as customers come to the end of their existing contract with JLB, they will be contacted and given an offer to keep Plusnet as their broadband provider instead.