Changing Internet Service Provider (1: before the day)

I am currently with Plusnet, I have been with them since they took over Force9.  I have a website with them, that the children created - before they grew up and had families of their own.  It was for a while a hobby.  I'm not that concerned about the website, I have the source somewhere, and it's no longer relevant today.  Creating it taught me and, to some extent, my children, about the web. I also have email with Plusnet - that is important.  Although I have migrated most things away from that service, there are a number of things that are very difficult to change - and many that we have probably forgotten about.  As part of that, I have my own domain name - fisher-folk.co.uk.  It is used for the website and in lots of email addresses.

My current service is FTTC, with the analogue phone system also run by Plusnet. I would like to upgrade to "Full Fibre" (FTTP) to get better speeds, as we are now regularly streaming TV and would like to do it in more rooms.  We also have to retain the phone number as it is the only way that several of Jo's mum's friends can contact us.  Staying in touch is hard enough, without deliberately breaking the easiest form of communication.

Plusnet can offer FTTP, but not with a phone line, so a change will be required.

After a little research, I settled on Zen Internet.  They (OpenReach) will be coming tomorrow to install the new service.  

There have been several 'disconnects' along the way.  First, the installation date that I requested via Zen's website was effectively ignored. Zen told Plusnet it would be 8 Jan 2025, so Plusnet told me my service would end on 8 Jan.  OpenReach could not do the installation until 28th, so the date was changed and Zen told me of the new date.  Plusnet did not, but when I called them, after calling Zen, they were aware of the new date.  The lack of communication causes extra work for them and for me.  There is also reputational damage for Plusnet - I'm unlikely to change back to them in the future, after the phone service digital migration.

Getting my domain from Plusnet is also a struggle.  They do not seem to know what they are doing, and I certainly don't, it's my first try at changing the registrar of my domain.  The first request I made by phone was ignored, either by Plusnet or their service provider.  When I updated the ticket, a 'bot' closed it because customer input is no longer allowed.  How about taking the update link away? Surely that would make more sense?  I now have to wait 5 days and will lose 5 days or more of email as a result.

Since BT bought Plusnet, years ago, the service has degraded slowly; it seems that continues.

We'll see how tomorrow goes.

File Space and Band Width Usage

The day before we went away, the Christ Church website (hosted by PlusNet) was taken down because it had exceeded its bandwidth allocation. It is a great unknown to me just what is out there on the web, trawling (crawling) around for the content of various websites. The excess wasn't spectacular, because it had been stopped, but had happened by 3am. If someone had tried to copy the site, and then someone else tried to do the same, that would account for it.

We post sermons on the site, and this may be one of the reasons that our bandwidth usage is increasing (the sign of a successful site). Certainly, there was a lot of interest from many places on the talk by Dr Salim Munayer from the Bethlehem Bible college, on the Holy Land.

I started the work necessary to restore the site. Log in was the first problem, it had been ages. The password I thought I remembered was not working, neither were the variants of it. I phoned support and told them I had needed the password. They went through several security questions, one of which is "What is the first and second letter of your password?" Luckily, I had the first two letters correctly remembered.

I had some work to do in the Church Office, so went there to do it. The site was still not back. We had been offline over 12 hours. I phoned Customer Services and asked about the possibilities of upgrades, and explained why I was asking. Where might our custom have to go if we can't get our site back? I made sure I sounded very unhappy. I talked about our users being unable to access the information they needed. I said that I thought a business service should be better managed. All this did the trick, the site was restored in minutes.

I am still fighting the system - trying to get support to respond; trying to get the information I need to manage the situation. The responses are slow and inaccurate so far. Webspace statistics only get updated when you do an upload, and then it may take 24 hours. Bandwidth Statistics are recorded and presented graphically, but access to some graphs is not available from our account on the portal.

PlusNet generally have a good reputation, but I notice that they are no longer in the top few ISPs since they were bought by BT.

Now I am looking at the alternatives. Especially as three days into the new accounting month, we are already approaching 25% of the month's allocation. We do not have money to burn, but will pay our way. So I started with the free file sharing services. The first failed at the sign-up process, the promised e-mail that I must respond to never came. The second one is FrostBytez. It's in America, but beggars can't be choosers. If it's all working, this URL should be a line drawing of the church building: http://upload.frostbytez.com/index.php/image/direct/FjJ48fZ2xQ/christ-church-orig.jpg

Try it and let me know if it doesn't work.

Broadband Speed

My ISP(Plusnet) speed test says:










On the BBC web site its: 5.5-5.8 Mbps

We are close to the exchange, so we should get a good speed. As this test was completed before 8am, I can be certain that my PC is the only one connected to my router.

I am planning to move my Broadband connection to my normal home line, and will be interested to repeat the test there.