I joined plusnet (pn) at the beginning of February 2015 as I wanted to save some money as I was spending a lot of money with my previous ISP (BT). Annoyingly they don't offer a static IP on their residential services which was one of the main reasons I migrated to pn.

I was pretty much at the max end of FTTC (80/20) with BT and on migration day my speeds dropped to about 60/20. I contacted pn via twitter and their forums expressing dissatisfaction in regards to the drop in speeds. Various c/s agents purported that I was getting the speeds my IP Profile suggested; however nothing had changed in my set up from BT to pn and I couldn't fathom out what was going on.

An engineer from openreach (or) was sent out who only called me and said from his tests everything was fine with my line. He said that an IP Profile reset could reduce my speeds further. This made no sense as 1) I live about 100/120 metres from the green cabinet and 2) nothing had changed before and after migration.

Speeds didn't improve and I raised another ticket with pn. After 5 days or so I had a call from C/S who said they would send out another or engineer. This time he was more helpful and actually came into my property and checked everything. He suggested that ISP's have more tests that they can do on lines than what he can do AND also said ISP's can do IP Profile resets. Anyhow, everything was fine and he reset my IP Profile - the next day I was back up to 80/20 speeds.

C/S is pretty hit or miss, especially on the official forums. Sometimes it can go days without any official pn comments - but when it is good it is very good. Tickets can be slow in regards to being dealt with, but when they are I have been satisfied with the outcome.

Pro's:

- Static IP (at a one off cost of £5)
- Pro Add On (£5 a month) which is good for online gaming
- Reasonable priced broadband and pn is a derivative of BT
- Good customer service and UK based!
- Can use own VDSL router and the friendly forums have assisted me in configuring mine with some agents providing indirect support in setting this up
- Can use the Homehub 5
- Good value
- Good support on twitter and facebook
- Was able to request permanent number withold on my landline at no cost
- When there are outages or planned maintenance this is clearly shown on their website and via RSS feeds with resolutions (for outages) being pretty swift IMHO
- Good breakdown of usage albeit with a 3/4 hour delay
- Free Mcafee antivirus software

Con's:

- Poor supplied router in terms of ethernet speed and no gigabit support
- No IPTV (yet!)
- Response to fault tickets can be slow
- Hit and miss consistency with faults that are being dealt with on the forums (i.e. staff dealing with a specific issue may be on days off and nothing seems to be resolved)
- Sporadic speed issues (for me) in the first 6 weeks of service (now resolved)
- The free email took several hours to activate on my package

Overall, I am pleased my speed issues are resolved and I am now happy with the service. My contract is up in the New Year (2016) and I will let the contract roll on, considering that BT don’t offer a static IP.