Broadband ISP Plusnet Stops Selling Own Brand UK Mobile Plans
Budget UK broadband ISP Plusnet, which has often been positioned as BT’s low-cost division, have this morning confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that they will today stop selling their own-brand of EE powered Pay Monthly SIM-Only Mobile plans to new customers.
The move appears to form part of the BT Group’s wider branding strategy and their work to turn EE – over time – into their “flagship brand for our consumer customers” (here). As a result of this, we’ve already seen Plusnet stop providing managed services to new residential customers under the John Lewis brand (here) and we recently reported that their BTSport TV add-on was also on the way out (here).
The situation also left a big question mark over what approach BT would take to Plusnet’s EE powered Mobile products, but now we know the answer.
A Plusnet spokesperson said:
“We will stop selling Plusnet Mobile products to new customers at the end of March. Existing customers will remain on their current plans. Over time we will be contacting existing customers directly to let them know what this change means for them.”
The information for existing customers is currently quite vague, but the suspicion is that they may eventually be migrated over to EE.
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 and Linkedin.
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I am glad I changed to smarty. Ee signal was not great here anyway
Plusnet never get value mobile deal anymore always stayed 4G is useless. Glad I left them last year to join 1p mobile 5G for better deal.
IMO the bigger problem is that Plusnet Mobile never supported VoLTE and therefore couldn’t use EE’s 800MHz 4G spectrum. EE’s coverage goes down hill when you can’t use its longest range signal!
@Rich, you do have a weird list of “useless” things. 4G is useless, FTTC is useless… I mean, c’mon. In parts of the country EE’s 4G competes with Three’s or Vodafone’s “fast” 5G.
Plusnet Mobile was a rebrand of Life Mobile which was an MVNO on the old Orange network. Unless things have changed it was provided via the old Orange systems, whereas all the new development was via the ex T-Mobile systems.
I suspect that is why 5G VoLTE etc were a challenge and possibly part of the reason for the closure, migrate to the new systems at large expense or kill off the product.
Absolutely anything BT are in involved, it’s a kiss of death, the only thing BT are good at, getting things wrong, customer services making stories up, better than jackanory and putting prices up.
Agree. Like cutting the wholesale charges for FTTP, it’s ONLY to make the ALTNETS go out of business (in BT’s eyes) NOT for consumer interest at heart. After competition gone, the crank on price increases starts. Plus.net will be gone, BT don’t like a value service. The BT fan people and ex-telecom employees will be on here to try and defend BT but they can’t really, as everyone can see through what they do. I believe them and EE (same company) were the first to introduce CPI + 3.9% every year with no penalty free contract exit to work around the original OfCom requirement of exiting for free if a price increase was inflation or more.
I believe (though you may prove me wrong) that as well as being first to use CPI+ price rises (despite fttp wholesale prices coming down) that EE were the first to drop the roam like you’re at home for new contracts in Europe. Strikes me the certain people are a little bit greedy.
>Absolutely anything BT are in involved, it’s a kiss of death, the only thing BT are good at, getting things wrong, customer services making stories up, better than jackanory and putting prices up.
Yup…
I never did like their monthly contract Sims and having to wait 30 days to cancel
Prefer Smarty where I am in control of my payments
This is just the start, Plusnet will cease to be soon.
Fair play to the staff in the comments section on this site, who have been predicting this for months.
Well it’s not really a prediction – We get weekly e-mails about it.
But thanks to you for saying so Iain 🙂
Pity that. I been with Plusnet for about 7 years for my phone and the wife’s. Always found it to be a good reliable service and a good signal for where my usage normally is. Good price too (except for this years 14% increase).
PlusNet, we’ll do you proud! I guess is coming to an end
I sure hope so – Plusnet Joe wore off on me about 3 months after he started – which was in like 2001..
EE is the only option for me, and many others in my town, as the signal for the rest is useless. I used to be with Virgin who moved from EE to O2/whatever. I chose Plusnet because EE was expensive for SIM only. The cheapest EE SIM-only 1-month contract deal is over twice as much as Plusnet.
Once again, it’s all about money and loss of competition…
I’m in the same boat. EE is the only network that covers where I live and Plusnet was/is the cheapest way to access it. I think it’s inevitable that prices will eventually rise to match EE. The only alternative is 1p Mobile, but they only have a £5 and £10 tariff.
From the 1st April all Plusnet software will be supported by Indian outspurcer TCS as all staff left are being Tupe over into TCS. Expect service quality to drop lower than it is now.
This is awesome – Considering I am someone involved in the support of the PN network and software – I must have missed the briefing, that I usually put together anyway!
Well played for making that up. By the way 36.1% core network usage right now over the whole UK – just so you’ve got something else to exaggerate 🙂
Took a break between taking support calls and selling FTTP over the phone to become both a network support engineer (NOC do that) and support internal IT (ISS and IT are their own team) while writing engineering briefings, haha?
Clearly a man of many job titles and many talents.
What core network across the entire UK by the way?
BT Wholesale deliver traffic to some Plusnet LNS over NNIs using WMBC, they’re then delivered to BT’s network to use its transit and peering. That’s it.
Plusnet’s network sits entirely in between BT Wholesale and BTNet. Once it’s across the NNIs it’s going to be super cheap, either fibre runs to kit in the same building or leased dark fibre in between sites in Docklands area.
So what was at 36.1% at 7pm? Doubt it was the NNIs to Wholesale/Enterprise. Running them that lightly would be commercial suicide. All the customers have to come through them so there’s the bottleneck.
Core Network, LNS? Unless you have a static IP they use the same product as BT/EE where the PPP session is terminated on the BT Wholesale kit in the head end exchange.
Handed to Plusnet as IP in a couple of sites in London and then straight on to BTnet who provide all of their internet access. LNS are only used for static IP addressed customers in those two sites.
They’ve moved all the dynamic customers to Broadband Complete?
I didn’t know that. So most of the LNS have been switched off as have the NNIs serving them then.
Most of what Plusnet’s network is doing is acting as IP transit between two parts of BT: not even terminating WBMC bar the statics. Learn something new every day.
Nope not Broadband Complete. That is for smaller scale deployments.
It is based on WBMC Dedicated where the users PPP session is terminated in the head end exchange. BT used that approach for 10+ years now. There is then a VPN that delivers to Plusnet (or BT or EE) over big links in London. LNS have only been for static customers for about 5 years now.
If you remember people found they couldn’t gateway (LNS)hop any more, that was when they moved to this new model.
Goodnews! Feel free to check on the TCS info with people that know. Namely someone in BT Digital team. 400 are being Tupe over to TCS over the coming months for legacy apps, Plusnet software is classed as legacy. It’s news available publically.
https://www.capacitymedia.com/article/2azlf633i72ohtzwiujgg/news/bt-outsources-400-digital-staff-to-tata-as-it-runs-down-legacy-technology
It’s a complete shame and must be the reason why the broadband has suddenly become less competitive too… Meh nevermind.
If people need a MVNO on EE, rgw mobile offer some very good deals , 5gb unlimited mins/txt, £5 a month no contract, they are based in Wales but cover the whole UK
I’d not heard of rgw before, but they look to be just what I’m looking for, a cheap EE MVNO to replace Plusnet – thanks for mentioning them.
What is MVNO?
Its RWG mobile. Been with them over 2 years, cant fault them. 5g started on monday,and witi calling on the way. They have really good deals,when i joined i started on the the £15 one off payment bundle for 100 mins 100 texts and 750mb data free every month. Still on it now,
My contract ends soon with BT can’t wait to leave, thinking about plusnet, now what can I do
1p mobile or lebera mobile.
1p mobile use EE
Lebera mobile use vodafone
I use 1P they are the cheapest I have ever used – even their yearly tariffs are good
“The information for existing customers is currently quite vague, but the suspicion is that they may eventually be migrated over to EE.”
10000% correct as I have been saying for 6 weeks now.
It’s all going to EE – BT and PN are being killed off. The briefing we had yesterday gave dates but as I never get any replies to my e-mails I won’t be offering you any
Implying that you’ve been leaking confidential information from your employer in public probably isn’t smart given it’s pretty well known who you are.
Might be worth asking Mark to delete this.
I agree with Comments, while I doubt very much my employer would be able to tell who I am from here, I am very careful what I say.
even on Facebook if I talk about the sector I work in, I don’t name the company I work for and I certainly don’t post any secrets. Not worth the risk. I don’t even have the company I work for on my profile on facebook. I say stuff about the sector I work for, but never about the company.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate my job and if something came up I would be gone in a shot, but then I told my managers that. At the end of the day my job pays my bill and as jobs go it is not too bad.
Looking forward to my invitation to migrate over to EE for 29% less allowances at 3x the cost
Fixed broadband on the chopper next Mr J?
At present it seems like BT will retain Plusnet as a very basic broadband ISP. The brand is too well established, so killing it off would seem to be counter-productive. But then trying to turn EE into BT’s new division for all things consumer is perhaps not the best approach either, so you never know.
@Mark Jackson, basic is what I like, if it works, gives me a connection to the internet that is all I need. Other providers that try to stick extras in are not for me, never have been.
I remember years ago when providers used to offer free email, free webspace, one even offered a free domain, but it was not really free.
so many places for free emails now, not so sure about webspace these days, but then people use stuff like facebook.
just had a quick search and there is free hosting around, but I bet they are covered with adverts.
But for an ISP, my needs are simple, it works, it is a decent enough speed that I can do what I need, it is reliable and for the most part Plusnet have been reliable but when I did have a problem, that was Openreach and not Plusnet. The other thing is the price, in that it is not over the top.
Plusnet offers a good service for the price, we will see how things go, still have until the end of June until my contract is out. As my mother used to say, a lot of water will flow under the bridge by then.
The nightime and weekend support staff at Plusnet were great. Which ISP are they going to?
RIP PN soon. Very sad day indeed!
MVNO= Mobile Virtual Network Operator. An operator which piggybacks from one of the main mobile phobe companies. The following all use EE currently, 1pmobile, Ecotalk, Now Mobile, popit, rwg mobile, the phone co+op. Hope this helps.
1pMobile do not only have a £5 and £10 tariff. Not sure why Dan said that.
They have classic PAYG at 1p/1p/1p up to 200GB with unlimited calls/texts for £20.
They also have yearly plans like £36 for unlimited calls and texts plus 250mb of data a month for 12 months.
They use EE and have 5G, Wifi calling and Volte. I have used them for years and have never had a problem with them.
Really sorry to hear this. I’ve been with PN for broadband for many years. Simple ADSL with. 4GB monthly allowance in 2006. Always had good service, helpful staff and quick identification and rectification of faults. They’ve also seen me through several house moves. Transferred my mobile over about 2 years ago and got a good deal for my son’s 1st mobile at the same time. Don’t want to pay more for fancy branding under EE and expensive TV adverts. Not good.
I’ve been a Plusnet mobile customer for quite a few years, and In North Yorkshire (the part I live in anyway) EE’s data download speed via 4G is consistently over 100 Mbs, way faster than the other mobile service providers I’ve tried in the area I live. Smarty is cheap but the speed I get (4G via Three’s network) is slow – you get what you pay for, so for the money it’s ok.
Will see what happens if PN customers are going to be transferred over to EE because I’ve enjoyed cheap sim price plans and good service since I’ve been with PN, and if the eventual transfer then ends up meaning a big hike in price I’ll be saying bye-bye and looking elsewhere.
Plusnets not closing everyone and the mobile is just being brand migrated across to EE also the call centres were EE too most cases mainly Liverpool ..broadband isn’t going anywhere…and whilst the mobile brand will be EE the customer service and prices will remain discounted etc…never fear nothings changing only for the better ( opening up the full EE coverage now to pnet customers)
Great.
EE is the only network that’s good for signal in most places and plusnet mobile is the only provider that has decent price tariffs.
I hate BT with a passion and this just increased my hatred even more.