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This page refers to a broadband product that's no longer available to new customers
Existing customers can continue to benefit from its features, or upgrade to one of our current products
Broadband Your Way is a set of broadband products available on standard broadband.
It was launched on 11th April 2007 and withdrawn from sale to new customers on 16th February 2009.
- How much is it?
- What's the monthly usage allowance?
- What features and extras are available?
- What's the referral value?
- How is traffic management applied?
1. How much is it?
There are five variants of Broadband Your Way; the price depends on which you've taken:
| Account | Cost | Cost during VAT reduction (1st December 2008 - 31st December 2009) |
|---|---|---|
| Option 1 | £9.99 | £9.75 |
| Option 2 | £14.99 | £14.65 |
| Option 3 | £19.99 | £19.55 |
| Option 4 | £29.99 | £29.35 |
| Pro | £19.99 | £19.55 |
2. What's the usage allowance?
Broadband Your Way is a flexible product that allows you to choose your own usage allowance. Each option has a base amount of usage, which you can increase whenever you like.
| Product | Included usage | Cost to increase monthly allowance |
|---|---|---|
| Option 1 | 2GB | £1.00 per 1GB |
| Option 2 | 15GB | 75p per 1GB |
| Option 3 | 30GB | 75p per 1GB |
| Option 4 | 40GB | 75p per 1GB |
| Pro | 15GB | £1.50 per 2GB |
Overnight usage (between Midnight and 8am) does not count towards your monthly usage allowance.
If you go over your allowance, what happens depends on how you've set up your account on the Broadband Your Way Control Panel
- If you've chosen to fix your cost: Your broadband speed will be restricted to 256kb/s at all times, until the end of the billing month. Access to binary Usenet, peer-to-peer and external FTP will be blocked. You can increase your fixed cost (adding more usage) to lift these restrictions, or you can wait until the end of your billing month
- If you've chosen to 'Pay as you go': Your allowance for the month will be increased in blocks as per the table below. You'll be charged for any usage and your allowance will reset at the end of your billing month
| Product | Usage blocks | Cost per additional block |
|---|---|---|
| Option 1 | 1GB | £1.25 |
| Option 2, 3 and 4 | 1GB | £1.00 |
| Pro | 2GB | £1.80 |
3. What features and extras are available?
- Unlimited email addresses
- Plusnet Protect
- Plusnet Assist
- Broadband Phone was available for free if registered before 19th December 2012 - PAYG (option 1), Anytime 120 (option 2) and Anytime 240 on options 2, 3, 4 and Pro
- One .co.uk domain can be registered for use with Plusnet email and webspace for £1 per month
- Up to 5 domains can be hosted for free
- 250MB webspace (with CGI & MySQL access if required)
- All connections are assigned a dynamic IP as standard (a Static IP can be assigned for a one-off fee of £5)
4. What's the referral value?
The referral value for Broadband Your Way products depends on the option selected:
| Variant | Referral Value |
|---|---|
| Option 1 | £0.25 |
| Option 2 | £0.25 |
| Option 3 | £0.50 |
| Option 4 | £0.50 |
| Pro | £0.50 |
Find out more about referrals.
5. How is traffic management applied?
We assign all traffic on the network a priority, with the more time-sensitive applications given a higher priority. Higher priority traffic gets bandwidth before lower priority traffic. As the total bandwidth available is shared, this means lower priority traffic can be slower at busy times when there's less bandwidth available.
| Activity | Option 1 priorities | Option 2 priorities | Option 3 & 4 priorities | Pro priorities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing & Email | Gold | Gold | Gold | Gold |
| VoIP | Titanium | Titanium | Titanium | Titanium |
| Gaming | Gold | Titanium | Titanium | Titanium |
| Streaming | Gold | Gold | Gold | Gold |
| VPN | Gold | Gold | Gold | Gold |
| Plusnet FTP | Gold | Gold | Gold | Gold |
| External FTP | Gold plated | Gold plated | Gold plated | Gold |
| Download sites | Gold plated | Gold plated | Gold plated | Gold |
| Download servers | Gold | Gold | Gold | Gold |
| Peer-to-Peer & Binary Usenet | Best effort | Best effort | Bronze | Gold |
| Other | Silver | Silver | Silver | Gold |
As well as prioritising traffic, we apply rate-limits to make sure everyone gets a good online experience. Below are the download speeds we aim for on each of the Broadband Your Way options.
- If you're not sure what the categories mean, see the key below the tables
- These speeds are not guaranteed, and you may see lower if the network is busy. Under normal conditions and providing our network is performing well, we relax the rate limits on Fridays and Saturdays
- Before reporting a problem, make sure you read our tips on How to get the best broadband speed
Option 1
| 12am-6pm | 6pm-7pm | 7pm-10pm | 10pm-12am | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing | Line speed | |||
| Line speed | ||||
| VoIP | Line speed | |||
| Peer to peer/Usenet | Line speed | 50kb/s | 100kb/s | |
| Plusnet FTP | Line speed | |||
| External FTP | Line speed | 256kb/s | ||
| VPN | 512kb/s | 512kb/s | ||
| Gaming | Line speed | |||
| YouTube | Line speed | 1Mb/s | Line speed | |
| Download sites | Line speed | 256kb/s | ||
| Download servers | Line speed | 2Mb/s | ||
| Streaming | Line speed | |||
| Other | Line speed | 288kb/s | Line speed | |
Option 2
| 12am-6pm | 6pm-7pm | 7pm-10pm | 10pm-12am | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing | Line speed | |||
| Line speed | ||||
| VoIP | Line speed | |||
| Peer to peer | Line speed | 192kb/s | 228kb/s | |
| Usenet | Line speed | 192kb/s | 320kb/s | |
| Plusnet FTP | Line speed | |||
| External FTP | Line speed | 256kb/ | ||
| VPN | Line speed | |||
| Gaming | Line speed | |||
| YouTube | Line speed | 1.4Mb/s | Line speed | |
| Download sites | Line speed | 256kb/s | ||
| Download servers | Line speed | 2Mb/s | ||
| Streaming | Line speed | |||
| Other | Line speed | 288kb/s | Line speed | |
Option 3
| 12am-6pm | 6pm-7pm | 7pm-10pm | 10pm-12am | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing | Line speed | |||
| Line speed | ||||
| VoIP | Line speed | |||
| Peer to peer | Line speed | 256kb/s | 320kb/s | |
| Usenet | Line speed | 320kb/s | 512kb/s | |
| Plusnet FTP | Line speed | |||
| External FTP | Line speed | 512kb/s | ||
| VPN | Line speed | |||
| Gaming | Line speed | |||
| YouTube | Line speed | 2.5Mb/s | Line speed | |
| Download sites | Line speed | 512kb/s | ||
| Download servers | Line speed | 2Mb/s | ||
| Streaming | Line speed | |||
| Other | Line speed | 288kb/s | Line speed | |
Option 4
| 12am-6pm | 6pm-7pm | 7pm-10pm | 10pm-12am | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing | Line speed | |||
| Line speed | ||||
| VoIP | Line speed | |||
| Peer to peer | Line speed | 384kb/s | 512kb/s | |
| Usenet | Line speed | 384kb/s | Line speed | |
| Plusnet FTP | Line speed | |||
| External FTP | Line speed | 512kb/s | Line speed | |
| VPN | Line speed | |||
| Gaming | Line speed | |||
| YouTube | Line speed | 2.5Mb/s | Line speed | |
| Download sites | Line speed | 512kb/s | ||
| Download servers | Line speed | 2Mb/s | ||
| Streaming | Line speed | |||
| Other | Line speed | 288kb/s | Line speed | |
Pro
| All day | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All traffic | Line speed | ||||||
Key
- Browsing - Viewing webpages with a web browser
- Email - Sending and receiving email with an email program such as Outlook or Mac Mail
- VoIP - Making phone calls over your broadband connection
- Peer to peer/Usenet - Downloading with from file sharing applications or binary newsgroups (does not include text only services)
- Plusnet FTP - Using FTP to move files to or from servers operated by us
- External FTP - Using FTP to move files to or from servers not operated by us
- VPN - A secure way to connect to a network at another location, often used by home workers to access work systems. Includes VNC and Windows Remote Desktop. Network protocols such as SSH and Telnet also fall under the VPN category
- Gaming - Online gaming
- Download sites & servers - Large file transfers to or from the following sites and sources
- Streaming - Playing continuous multimedia TV, movie or music files
- Other - Activities that do not fit into the above categories
- Activities not listed are not restricted but are subject to Traffic prioritisation
- The speeds shown here don't represent your overall line speed
- Demos, games downloads and system updates from services such as PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE fall under the Download Servers category rather than Gaming
- Applications not using their standard ports may be classed incorrectly
-
Line Speed depends on the type of broadband you have
- Fixed speed: up to 2Mb/s
- Max DSL/Max Premium: up to 6Mb/s
- ADSL2+: up to 16Mb/s
- Fibre: up to 38Mb/s (Plusnet Value and Plusnet Essentials)
- Fibre: up to 76Mb/s (Plusnet Extra and Plusnet Unlimited)
Download sites and servers
Connections to the sites and servers listed below may see reduced speeds when our network is busy. The list not exhaustive, and access to other websites that have content hosted by one of the large Content Distribution Networks may also be slowed when the network is busy.
Websites
- Adult bouncer
- Bangbros Online
- Kingdom.com
- Rapidshare
- ImageShack
- Megaupload
- TerraSpace
- badonga.com
- guba.com
- metainterfaces.com
- narrowstep.com
- sendspace.com
- wildrose.net
Servers
- German Mirror site
- Ireland Mirror site
- Kent Mirror site
Content Distribution Networks (CDN)
- Akamai
- Limelight Networks
- Level 3
Many downloads from Apple, Microsoft, PlayStation Network, Xbox LIVE and multimedia content from sites such as the BBC, eBay and Facebook are hosted on one of the above Content Distribution Networks. Depending on your account type, downloads from these sources may be slowed during busy times.
Downloads using download accelerators are also managed.
6. Can I switch between the options?
You can, use the following Help Assistant path to request this:
Customer Services & Billing > Account Management > Change or Upgrade Your Product > Switch Between Broadband Your way Options
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