Plusnet moves to monthly broadband contracts

Plusnet, the broadband supplier acquired by BT earlier this year, is now offering broadband on a monthly contract.

The Broadband Your Way offering comes with four options, priced at £9.99, £14.99, £19.99 and £29.99 a month with usage allowances set at 1GB, 8GB, 20GB and 40GB  respectively. In addition any use between midnight and 8am is free and unmetered.

“While there’s space on the network overnight we’re quite happy for customers to fill their boots,” said Neil Armstrong, products director of broadband supplier Plusnet.

“We want to encourage people to use it overnight when the network is empty but paid for. It’s zero cost to us to offer that for customers for use of non-quality-specific functions like downloading.”

During the day the amount of traffic on the network from P2P and Bittorrent is limited to around 10 to 20 per cent of network capacity, but in the free period this can rise to nearly 100 per cent. The daytime traffic limits are in place to give priority to time-critical traffic such as VoIP and gaming data.

“That kind of traffic needs prime attention,” added Armstrong.

“If you’re a gamer the last thing you want is to be playing and have the game hang for ten seconds and see the other player score a goal.”

All connections are up to 8MB download speeds but the company will be upgrading its line to 24MB when the network is upgraded to ASDL 2+ later in the year.