From F9:

Great news! Free speed upgrades to all Force9 customers
--------------------------------------------------------

Following BT's recent announcement that they plan to increase broadband speeds up to 8Mb across their local exchange network, we are delighted to offer free speed upgrades and a brand new product range for our customers.

From April, you will be able to take advantage of these faster broadband speeds as they become available, giving you a free-of-charge upgrade to the fastest broadband available.

BT is working hard to ensure that as many people as possible are able to receive the maximum available speeds. Further, BT Wholesale's changes enable us to determine our customers' actual speed setting, instead of this being set at BT's local exchange.

1) Speed upgrades to all fixed-cost broadband products
------------------------------------------------------

If you're currently on Broadband Home Premier, you will be able to choose the speed you operate your connection at - from 512kb right up to 8Mb where available.

The Premier product range offers a clean 50:1 contended DSL connection with no network restrictions or traffic shaping applied, so you can run whatever applications you need - at any time of the day - with no worries about speed or performance.

In conjunction with this, Force9 is implementing a 'fair usage' policy in which we will deliver a commitment to our customers, ensuring platform performance is not disproportionately affected by a small minority of extremely heavy users.

The table below shows how prices will relate to usage, rather than speed.

Broadband Premier Fair Usage Total 'Fair Usage' Achievable
Product On Peak Levels Inc Off Peak (based on 2Mb)

£21.99 30GB 230GB
£29.99 50GB 250GB
£39.99 75GB 275GB
£49.99 100GB 300GB
£59.99 125GB 325GB

Off-peak usage between 1am through 8am is excluded from 'fair usage' levels, so if you schedule downloads 'off-peak' you can achieve a far higher usage with no restrictions.

Further, only download data is monitored so uploads are not currently restricted in any way.

2) Speed increases for PAYG products
------------------------------------

Force9's Broadband PAYG products (formerly known as "Lite") will also be extended to include 4Mb and 8Mb speeds from April. At £14.99 per month, and £1.50 per GB thereafter, speeds of up to 8Mb will be a fantastic value product option for light and infrequent Broadband users.

3) Introducing Broadband Plus
-----------------------------

Broadband Plus will be available from April. This product range will complement our existing Broadband Pay As You Go and Premier products, and will offer unrivalled price value.

Broadband Plus is designed to meet the needs of the average Broadband user who wants fast email and web browsing. More advanced applications will be more suitable on the Broadband Pay As You Go and Premier products. A fair usage system does not need to apply to Broadband Plus due to the way the product is designed and network managed.

Broadband Plus has a lower service-providing cost than the Premier products, which will be reflected in the pricing we will publish for Broadband Plus in the near future.

'Broadband Pay As You Go', 'Broadband Plus' and 'Broadband Premier', are 3 simple product options that offer something for everyone, delivering market-leading value, quality of service and a great customer experience.

Further details on your specific connection and product delivery will be communicated to you in the near future.

We look forward to continuing to provide you with market-leading broadband services and fantastic value prices.

Kind regards,
Force9 Customer Support

View related information on the fair usage levels
- http://www.force9.net/features/usage_guide.shtml

must be catching this fair usage policy .... no mention of speed increases though, it might be time to swap isp again i think
:rolleyes:


This email is to notify you of the introduction of a fair usage policy for our residential broadband services, which will apply from April 2005. Additional information and an FAQ, where we have answered many questions that may arise have also been provided at the bottom of this email. Further to this, we will shortly make an additional announcement which relates to free connection speed increases being offered to all customers.

Background

Our residential broadband services are sold based on a 50:1 shared (contended) service. Customers who continuously download very large files, especially from sources where no revenue is generated to cover the cost of such high usage, are effectively using their connection as a 1:1 service. If left unchecked, this burden on capacity, plus the higher costs associated with this type of usage, would have meant general price increases or an impact on the speed and quality of our service for all customers. Furthermore, with the imminent connection speed increases most customers can expect to see, the problems caused by the very heaviest of users will only increase if no action is taken.

Fair Usage Policy

After reviewing our recent exercise, which placed the 0.2% of customers who had the highest utilisation onto a reserved platform, shared between themselves, it became clear that this was successful in terms of returning 10% of capacity. It was also apparent however that we needed to be clearer about what our Broadband products are designed to offer. Following feedback from our customers, we committed to introducing a clear fair usage policy, based on current contention levels, so that everyone can understand what fair and sustainable levels of usage are on our Premier broadband products.

We have worked hard to deliver a solution which avoids the need for us to increase prices or introduce monthly data transfer limits, both of which have been recently announced by many of our competitors. Because we understand that our customers wish to continue using a broadband product that is both flexible and sustainable, while offering great value at a low price, the fair usage policy we are adopting addresses these concerns. We believe it is both the clearest and fairest way for us to continue to offer the quality and service we are renowned for, to all of our customers.

The fair usage policy which is being introduced has been designed after taking into account specific customer feedback provided by the PlusNet Usergroup as well as a customer feedback survey, conducted last month. We envisage that the system will only affect around 1% of our customers, and even then, the design means a much smaller proportion than this will ever have their service impacted as a result of our fair usage policy. More information as well as details of how the system will work are provided on our website:

http://www.plus.net/features/usage_guide.shtml

We would also like to highlight that the fair usage levels which have been set are reflective of current wholesale costs for broadband provision, which like every ISP we must absorb. We recognise that usage levels vary for different customers and usage can be higher when people first register for broadband. The introduction of Internet telephony and video-on-demand style services will undoubtedly mean fair usage thresholds are reviewed in the future and because it is likely that provision of such services would include a revenue generating opportunity for ISPs, it means the costs of delivering these services can be accommodated within our product strategy.

The fair usage thresholds we will be implementing significantly exceed those defined by the 50:1 contended nature of our residential broadband products. As such, these changes represent a clarification to our existing terms and conditions (Sections 11.2(b) & 50.1). The introduction of a fair usage policy does not reflect a change to the product we are supplying. We would however encourage any customer who is unclear about any matter in relation to fair usage to contact our support centre where we will be happy to address your individual enquiry. Before doing so however we would ask that customers review all of the additional content provided in the link above.

With Regards,

Carol Axe
PlusNet Customer Support

Roll on April - cant wait to get 8MB - local exchange is just down road from me !!!

Yes, well, I'm with Force9, but what does it all mean? can't /don't have time to/ cut through the jargon:confused:
Call me lazy if you like - I have other things on my mind at present:) :P

Originally posted by Draggletail
Yes, well, I'm with Force9, but what does it all mean? can't /don't have time to/ cut through the jargon:confused:
Call me lazy if you like - I have other things on my mind at present:) :P

It means: 'don't panic if you're not downloading every mp3 file ever created, and soon you'll be able to surf faster, but we'll spam you to death when it's available, so just relax for now'

:D :thumbsup:

Originally posted by Strix
It means: 'don't panic if you're not downloading every mp3 file ever created, and soon you'll be able to surf faster, but we'll spam you to death when it's available, so just relax for now'

:D :thumbsup:

Gotcha :thumbsup: :D

Does anyone have any kind of 'counter' program which measures exactly how much you've downloaded? I know Eclipse Internet provide one for their customers.

Originally posted by alchresearch
Does anyone have any kind of 'counter' program which measures exactly how much you've downloaded? I know Eclipse Internet provide one for their customers.
Force9/Plusnet have this facility on their website. Don't know of any programmes you can download to do this, but there again I haven't been looking, Alch. :)

I use DUmeter (http://www.dumeter.com)

I find it's pretty good, although with F9's 'off-peak' banding (1am to 8am) it'd be nice to find something that supports usage loggin during user-defined periods.

Originally posted by LesMcQueen
I use DUmeter (http://www.dumeter.com)

I find it's pretty good, although with F9's 'off-peak' banding (1am to 8am) it'd be nice to find something that supports usage loggin during user-defined periods.

Presumably that's why they have 'view my usage' on their own site

Originally posted by Strix
Presumably that's why they have 'view my usage' on their own site

F9's VMU only shows total bandwidth usage (upload + download)

I'd like to see how much I'm downloading in comparison to how much I'm uploading.
Under the new 'fair-use' rules, uploads are not counted, but Downloads are.

they now offer a 2meg connection for £14.99.

plusnet have sent me an email exactly the same as the f9 one now are these the same company

:confused:

Originally posted by pj66
plusnet have sent me an email exactly the same as the f9 one now are these the same company

:confused:

Yes.

Originally posted by tslogf74
Yes.

and so is Free-Online :P