Broadband ISP Plusnet UK Discontinues Static IP Address Option
Low-cost broadband ISP Plusnet (BT Group), which over the past few years has already lost many of its extra features (pay TV, home phone (on FTTP), mobile etc.), appears to have added yet another service to the digital dustbin after customers began complaining that they could no longer add a Static IP address to their accounts.
Concern about future support for the Static IP feature, which costs an extra £5 to add, first emerged over the summer after some customers reported to ISPreview that they were no longer able to add the service to their accounts. But on 20th August 2024 a spokesperson for the provider denied this and told ISPreview that they “don’t currently have any plans to remove this option” (customers were still able to manually request it).
However, regular readers will know that we don’t put much stock in statements that use a “no plans” style response, since that phrase is easily one of the most used and abused in the modern PR arsenal. Plans can and often do change, frequently at short notice. Sadly, it seems as if that has once again proven to be true.
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Several of Plusnet’s customers recently contacted ISPreview to complain that the provider’s support staff were no longer allowing Static IP addresses to be requested, with those who attempted to do so being told that the feature had been discontinued. A related information page and the provider’s T&C’s also appear to have been updated to remove related references. Several related posts about this can be found on their community forum (here, here and here).
Sample Customer Complaint 1 (norliss)
“My full fibre service was activated earlier so I thought it I’d log in and buy a static IP address but the option was no longer there. I called up and was told this was no longer available. If this is the case it seems to have been dropped very suddenly and with no notice?”
Sample Customer Complaint 2 (salxyz)
“I’ve just called PN to enquire about getting a static IP address. Initially I was doing a bit of research and saw your could buy one for £5 from the add on section of your account, but this no longer seems to be the case. PN told me over the phone that static IP addresses are no longer being issued.”
Sample Customer Complaint 3 (Mark)
“Looks like Plusnet have removed the static IP option – it’s missing as an add on from everyone’s account and a few posts on the forum that when you call PN, response is that it’s no longer available. No mention yet what happens to existing IP’s – posts in last couple of days across the forum from people getting the same answer when they call.”
Yesterday, one of the provider’s community admins (JordanTA) finally confirmed the development: “The option for new static IPs was removed in October it looks like, those with existing static IPs will remain unaffected“. The fact that existing customers will continue to be supported is a positive sign, but it remains unclear how long that will last, although Plusnet’s own statement does slightly contradict their community admin with respect to the timeline.
A spokesperson for Plusnet told ISPreview:
“The Plusnet £5 Static IP option was withdrawn for new customers wishing to add it on to their account on the 18th December 2024 but remains in service for existing subscribers for the foreseeable future. Our guides remain on hand to support these customers with managing their Static IP service.”
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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Plusnet are going downhill lately.
Plusnet was supposed to have been the budget side of BT, that is why BT bought it. I am surprised that the static address option lasted for so long, maybe not enough people are using it to make it worthwhile to keep
The other thing is, BT is trying to get people to change to EE, or if someone need a static address, BT Business.
Sadly, there are fewer providers offering one now, mainly the higher price providers.
Zzoomm, do offer one, but I think it is a fiver a month and also, you have to be in a Zzoomm area.
I had one years ago, it came with my Wireless provider, but I never found much use for it at the time, I may do now as I have a NAS and a faster network, but I can get access to the NAS via their own service, but saying that I am not a fan of that idea. I am thinking of using a Dynamic DNS service. But not sure if I will use it enough.
Going back to Plusnet, they did offer a few options, they were trying to compete with Talk Talk and maybe Now broadband to a certain degree. I did have plusnet mobile service for a while, but the network was not great and smarty was a better price.
I did say at one point that I was pretty sure BT would not scrap Plusnet, but I am not so sure now.
plusnet is the type of broadband I like, they just offer the basic service, none of this rubbish of offering TV services and other stuff I don’t need. That is one thing I do like about Zzoomm, just a link to the internet via their network, just a shame their router is rubbish, they really need to give out something better or allow people to buy a decent one from them.
@Ad47uk Zzoomm is £10 for a single static IP.
Ps. Have a feeling their speed offering will be changing soon for residential to try and stand out – they now offer 20Gig up & down for business customers.
@Jack, I thought it was a fiver, £10 is a bit much unless you really need it .
If they increase the speed I hope they get a better router. such a shame because the service is good, but people who have problems due to the router, thinks that the service is rubbish. I have said for some people to get a new router and all I get is why should I when I pay for a service.
i can kind of understand that, pre-ADSL, we always had to get our own equipment.
@Ad47uk, Vodafone offer static IPs for free (although their routing could be better). When I was with them a little while ago via Openreach, I requested one on a live chat and support added it. No additional charge. Assigned and reflected on my line/account within 24 hours. A&A have the service as standard.
YouFibre, HeyBroadband, and some other altnets offer static IPs for £5 a month as well. I agree that charging £10 a month is too much for it. This list doesn’t mention a lot of the ISPs that support the service, so needs updating:
https://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband/help/what-static-ip
Slight correction: the £5 charge is a one off, not per month
The majority of PN’s customer base don’t need that service (most probably couldn’t even tell you what it is, much less why someone might need it), and a BT Business package is likely to be far more suitable for those that do.
All part of BT’s streamlining of their offering while attempting to milk their customers for as much as they can – I wonder if PN will even exist in 5 years time.
The nintendo switch actually requires it for multilayer to work correctly. Turns out it doesn’t use stun servers and all the usual tricks other games use to avoid issues.
It doesn’t require a static IP, it may require a public IP, which Plusnet still give you
@Monk Duck, that is a bit short-sighted of Nintendo, since the majority of people would not have static IP or no what it is
Cgnat (switch no workey) vs public ip address (be it static or random)
I left Plus Net years 7 ago when static IPv4 was still a free option, but they were dragging their feet over IPv6. They seemed to be going downhill then and this news doesn’t surprise me.
I’m still amazed that there appears to be a separate Plusnet broadband platform (see the story of a few months ago where they were “trialing” IPv6 even though BT itself has had it for years). Given that BT Group keeps banging on about internal simplification and an obsession with cost savings, it seems a no brainer to move PN and “old” EE customers onto the platform used by BT and “new” EE.
Perhaps the removal of the remaining bells and whistles is the start of that plan?
Plusnet was supposed to have been the budget end of BT services, and while the prices have increased, Plusnet is still cheaper than EE, buy a fair bit on the higher speed services.
Plusnet is £33.99 a month for 500Mb, EE is £39.99 a month, may not seem a lot, but it is still a fiver a month less for the same service. EE also don’t offer anything lower than 149Mb, while plusnet offers a 74Mb service, even if it is the same price as their 1445M<b service, but no doubt that will increase after the contract is out.
I presume the EE router is more or less like the BT one, I liked the one Plusnet provided, it was a simple router with not frill and rubbish stuffed in it and worked well. I presume the router plusnet supplies with their Fibre is not much different.
Some people don't want all the gimmicks that provider like BT/EE, Sky, Vodafone or even Talk Talk push, some of us just want a basic broadband service, that cost a little less and that is what Plusnet offers. The one reason why I like Zzoomm, even if I was and still not that bothered about Fibre. Would still be with plusnet FTTC if they gave me a good price, stopped pushing me to fibre and stopped pushing me to sign up for 24 months.
I am sure in time Plusnet will vanish, the same as the BT name, and EE will be all that is left on the home user consumer side anyway, how long it will take is another thing. plusnet is offering some reward card with some of their services, they would be better to lower the price per month.
They also offer some software for so-called protection
I agree, absolute madness, I believe Plusnet are still on thier own dedicated Cisco lns, with own systems sat on top. For better or worse this is about a decade overdue.
I imagine it’s only a matter of time before static IPv4 addresses are withdrawn from residential customers. I understand that PlusNet internally operates a “low touch” network for most residential customers and a “high touch” network for residential customers with a static IPv4 address. No doubt they’ll want to remove the low margin residential customers from the high cost high touch network.
And probably the horrible CGNAT rolled out to residential customers routinely as well.
I suspect BT wish to phase out PLusnet, Having three brands does not really make sense
The BT brand for consumer broadband is being phased out slowly.
EE is the brand positioned at the higher end with Wi-Fi 7, whole-home coverage, mobile phone bundle, premium TV etc. and Plusnet is there to compete with the discount providers.
Couldn’t care less whether or not a ISP provides me with a static IP…..
I have a Linux VPS with a static IP from IONOS,
and use a hand crafted VPN (openVpn) to connect to home.
Cost per month? £1.20
The medal’s in the post.
Near exact my setup too. Can’t fault the IONOS VPS for the price helps me get Spanish language stuff and at the same time a static IP as mentioned for critical stuff I need online 24/7. I also use a raspberry pi with a hostname updater linked to my couldflare account, I have my router rebooting every Tuesday early hours to clear stuff up and at the same time it resets the Plusnet connection so they give me a new IP, which is no issue as it’s all updated within a minute automatically.
My point was predicating the choice of ISP on whether
they provide a static IP or not, should not be necessary.
A 100% static can be accomplished as I described.
Or use Dynamic DNS service with a daemon process to track it.
(The latter costs nothing at all).
Is that with any data caps?
Or io charges..
If not wow that’s cheap guess what I’m doing this weekend with my pfsense and dual gig broadband connections…..
How reliable is it?
No caps, no i/o charges.
I have used pFsense for 4 years now. It is very stable and does the job very well.
But had problems with Aliases not being evaluated properly.
Fixed it by running a cron job, evaluating the alias in C code, and writing
the result to a table.
According to someone else, PN used to provide a static IP for a £5pm one off charge.
Given the choice I’d consider that preferable.
Note: I personally just use DDNS with my firewall setup to automatically update it, haven’t had any issues so far, although AFAIK I’m not using CGNAT (Sky). I do use a custom domain but that’s more for the ‘LOLs’, otherwise I’d just use a freebie like I did in the past.
Good that you have a setup that works for you but you can see how it’s a bad arguement right?
The static IP was a fixed £5 one off fee for a decade or so now which is withdrawn.
You are paying £14.40 a year on a service that should be £0 (after the initial setup). Not only that but you have the performance overhead of OpenVPN and then the latency from the whole setup is not free. You are hurting your own potential performance with this from the service you pay for.
Again absolutely nothing wrong with that setup and it works for you it’s just not optimal and has an additional cost. Other networks provide a static IP for free (Vodafone for example).
What the bloody hell? I literally ordered Plusnet FTTP on the 23rd December as they offered static IP, I decided on them to avoid Vodafone as they appear to have issues with routing in their leg of the network for reliable pings but this is a change that makes me cancel.
Openreach coming on the 7th as well, hmm. Guess I need to contact them today as this definitely wasn’t part of the site when I looked on the day! What a joke these people are, I wonder who to go with now as only Vodafone is actually cheaper but the horror stories I hear meant I didn’t want them, I just want a “clean” open reach connection! Shouldn’t be near the cost of virgin really but zen are quite expensive.
So i have just got off the phone with plusnet support and they say no its still offered the only change is the removale of the option from the user account so you have to call support to get it actioned.
I have gotten them to confirm this in writing now so I think im covered when this goes live on the 7th, hmm. How reliable is the “spokesman” for plusnet? I dont know how to feel about this I want a static ip its contingent on it.
Always chuckle at people expecting bespoke solutions from a budget provider. Guess you get what you pay for.
Ed how is a static IP anywhere near a “bespoke” solution?
They are hardly budget, Vodafone is cheaper by a fair amount. A static IP is a basic feature that even Vodafone offer, it’s not at all a bespoke solution.
Must be nice being able to laugh at wrong things I guess? Chuckle everytime someone buys from virgin etc. if you offer a service then it’s not unreasonable to expect it to be provided, simple right?
I’ve always assumed that BT bought plusnet to kill it off. The “can’t beat them, buy the out” model that has affected and eliminated many good products and services over the last 20 years.
I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the poison to take effect.
I was a account holder with plussnt but was a victim of a scam they still owe me£268
Moved 20 accounts from plusnet to Vodafone last year.
BT are the place where brands doing something different go to be reeducated…
Plusnet wasn’t getting the message so they are being slow walked along the plank…
Think I still have static IP address. One of the reasons I remain a Plusnet residential broadband customer. Took out a couple of years ago now. Presume this is just for people wanting to get one and not affecting customers who already have one. If I lose my static IP, will probably look to move away from Plusnet.
RE STATIC ADDRESSES an EASIER WAY ?
For those keen to have a static address but with an ISP who doesn’t provide such,
can I point out that it’s possible to get a VPS (virtual private server) in a
datacentre with a static address for LESS than £5 a month, and it’s a relative
trifle to set up a simple VPN service on that VPS, so you can connect your
home PCs to that VPN.
Then you can simply set routing rules in the VPS for any services you want to
expose on a static address, and route those from your home PC thru the VPN to
the VPS. I hope that’s not too complex for most tech-aware readers at least.