PlusNet's Products Director, Neil Armstrong, became one of the ISPs first few staff members to trial its forthcoming 'up to' 24Mbps ADSL2+ based broadband services this week. Neil reports managing to increase his downstream speeds from 5 to 6Mbps [365Kbps upload] (7.5Mbps sync) to 8.1Mbps [729Kbps upload] (12Mbps sync).

Interestingly his existing 2-Wire gateway router seemed to cause a few problems, initially hindering downstream speeds on the ADSL2+ line to the same speed as before. This was swapped to a D-Link 2640B instead, which fixed the problem and just goes to show that routers can sometimes make a big difference.

In sadder news PlusNet has confirmed that its presiding CEO, Neil Laycock, will be departing the ISP for pastures new. Anthony Vollmer, currently General Manager of Voice Propositions in BT Retail's consumer division, will take over the helm from Monday, 17th November 2008.

Both reports can be read on the providers Community Blog.