PlusNet
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| Plusnet Plc | |
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| Type | Public (LSE: PNT.L) |
|---|---|
| Founded | (1997) (as Plusnet Technologies Ltd) |
| Headquarters | Sheffield, UK |
| Key people | Kevin Adams, Non Executive Chairman Neil Laycock, Chief Executive |
| Industry | Internet |
| Products | Internet Services |
| Slogan | The smarter way to broadband |
| Website | http://www.plus.net |
PlusNet is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) based in Sheffield in the UK. They also operate under the Force9 and Free-Online brand names.
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[edit] History
The company was established in 1997 as "PlusNet Technologies Limited", although originally was better known for its F9 brand.
They won the Future UK Internet Awards for best consumer ISP and best customer service in 2004. They were floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 2004 after Insight sold the vast majority of its shares, thus making them a Public limited company (PlusNet Plc).
In 2005 Plusnet acquired Parbin Limited and consequently another UK ISP "MetroNet" who provide a range of "pay as you go" broadband packages.
Plusnet are the official shirt sponsor of Sheffield Wednesday, of the Football League Championship.
On 16 November 2006, it was announced that BT were making an offer for all shares in PlusNet. [1].
The BT deal (worth approximately £67m) was declared unconditional on 24 January 2007 (after OFT approval was granted), and it is likely that Plusnet will be removed from the AIM stock market around 21 February 2007. (source).
On 5 March 2007 the chief executive Lee Strafford and finance director Neil Corner were dismissed for misconduct. Strafford's position has been temporarily taken up by Neil Laycock. [1]
[edit] Email Crisis
On July 9, 2006, PlusNet lost large amounts of customer email data due to human error. During a routine maintenance upgrade to the email system, an engineer mistakenly deleted 700gb of email data by reformatting the live disk pack instead of the intended backup disk pack.
This mistake started on July 8 during an upgrade to resolve users' email connection problems. At 11:33 on July 9, PlusNet reported that all work was complete on the email maintenance. At 09:29 the next day, PlusNet reported getting customer complaints that email boxes were empty. PlusNet provided updates on their investigation [2] but did not reveal the size or cause of the problem until July 10 at 15:39.
PlusNet explains that the engineer responsible was unaware that a recent upgrade allowed access to the live and backup disk packs from a single workstation. The engineer believed his reconfiguration was to the backup storage when it was actually connected to the live email disk pack. [3]
In the following days, PlusNet recovered some email data and explained that other data may have been lost to corruption during the recovery.
The official PlusNet UserGroup launched an "Email Stability & Resiliency Campaign" to attempt to force PlusNet to prevent further occurrences of deleted user email data.
[edit] Virtual ISP
PlusNet operates a number of "Virtual ISP" brands, both for its own company, and for others. Some of these include:
- Plus.net.uk - Plusnet vISP for Business (obsolete - supposed to have merged into Force9)
- Force9 - The original ISP brand used residentially by PlusNet
- Free-Online - Setup to compete with Freeserve
- Metronet - A brand acquired as part of the Parbin acquisition in 2005.
- Your Ideal - A vISP for Lloyds TSB - (discontinued)
- Charity Days - A vISP for Donate As you surf Ltd, which donates money to charity.
[edit] Products
PlusNet currently provide broadband and dial-up Internet solutions to residential and business customers.
[edit] Product design
PlusNet have always designed their products around the 'average' usage of a typical customer. While this means competitive pricing for most people, they have on a number of occasions redefined their product usage guidelines in order to reflect changes in overall customer usage or in the costs they incur from their suppliers. This has resulted in customers being asked to restrict their usage, upgrade to a different product, or leave the company entirely.
[edit] Controversial policies
Since the original days of Force9, PlusNet has made efforts to engage their customers in public forums, and have sometimes gone into great detail about the reasons behind particular decisions. At other times they have not been so open, or have appeared to act first and update customers later. Examples of this can be found within discussions on Newsgroups and discussion forums such as ADSLGuide.
PlusNet have also found themselves receiving unwanted media attention at certain times. Most recently, this has been as a result of changes which were applied to the current Broadband product range. This included the introduction of a "Bad Boys Pipe" (withdrawn quickly), followed by a Fair usage policy [FUP], and then a Sustainable usage policy [SUP]. PlusNet continue to update their products, which they say is in order to cope with current industry circumstances. A balanced reflection of the situation UK ISPs face can be found here.
The company caused controversy in 2001, when 1100 customers were asked to leave the service after staying connected to an "Unmetered" (but contended) dial-up service for long periods of time. More about this can be found on The Register.
As part of their traffic fingerprinting, PlusNet have admitted to classifying all traffic originating from subnets owned by high traffic sites as collectively low priority (e.g YouTube, Giganews and Easynews, which may be considered discriminatory. See Network neutrality.
[edit] External links
- PlusNet homepage
- PlusNet broadband homepage
- Official PlusNet usergroup, helping users of all the PlusNet vISPs
- Plusnet forum on thinkbroadband.com (formerly ADSLGuide), with useful information
- Plusnetters, Unofficial user forum with resource site in development
