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CentralPOINT Changes Satellite Prices

Posted: 06th Apr, 2004 By: MarkJ

UK ISP CentralPOINT has today issued a new e-mail to its consumers announcing the future of the providers broadband satellite services, which will now be by a different supplier and cost a little extra:

The following information is very important and concerns your satellite broadband access, please read the following with care.

As you will know Plenexis are no longer providing satellite broadband services. This announcement was made at the beginning of this year and we have been carrying this information on our website home page since the 20th of January.

The current service will cease on the 18th of April.

When Plenexis decided to withdraw from the market, we started looking for an alternative supplier, during this process we took into account feedback from our customers, the main points being:

* Would like an unlimited service
* The existing technology is better than others tried
* Not interested in complicated tiers which cost extra for faster downloads

Taking this into account we tested the remaining suppliers in the satellite broadband market as consumers, and we have now decided that we will be reselling the Astra broadband service through AVC.

The decision was made to work in partnership with Astra and AVC for many reasons; Astra provide high quality satellite services on a massive scale and their expertise is unrivalled in the industry. Their broadband offering seems to be no exception to this.

AVC work very closely with Astra providing a nationwide installation service carrying out hundreds of thousands of installations each year, from dish installation to setting up a PC for Astra broadband.

So what does this mean for our customers?

You will not need to replace any hardware or have your dish moved

You will need to download and install some new software. This is a newer version of the software you are currently using and has a nicer interface and is badged Astra.

Good news and the bad news

We know our customers appreciate honesty so here is the good and bad news.

The good news:

The service will be unlimited, so you will never be cut off. You may be restricted to a smaller amount of data during peak times if you are a heavy downloader.

The Astra service uses the same but newer technology that you are already using.

There is a connection charge to the new platform but Central Point will pay this on your behalf

The bad news:

We will not be able to offer the 128k package as Astra do not have this service. Those of you using this service will have to move to the 256k package at a higher price.

Customers will have to pay a slightly higher fee, however, we believe that our prices are still the best value for money in the market.

The new charges are as follows:

Package - Price (inc VAT)
256k - £18.50
512k - £28.50
1024k - £38.50
2048k - £55.50

Customers will only be able to sign up for 256k 512k 1024k or 2048k packages.

You will need to signup using your credit card again when we migrate you.