Tweets like this illustrate two important things about BE: firstly, our customers are proud to recommend us, and secondly people understand our unlimited and unshaped service with accessible and experienced technical support is different to the majority of UK providers.
We’re currently planning how our products should develop in 2011, and we wanted to share our current thinking so you could tell us whether we’re on the right track.
Our products, pricing, support and network are designed to deliver an unlimited and unshaped broadband experience. You decide which web services you need to use and we never throttle your speed artificially.
We’ve been looking at the trends of how our customers use their broadband connection. For every hour we spend online the amount of data we consume is growing exponentially. Look at online video as an example: YouTube launched in 2005. iPlayer launched in 2007. It's been easy to share media files since the late 90s but in 2011 you can stream content directly to your HD TV without the need for a computer.
We're entering a new era of data-dependency. The amount of data everyone uses is going up and we’re going to need connections that can support that.
All this isn't news to our members. You’re the first to try new streaming and download services. You like the low latency and unshaped experience. You might use your connection for work so screen-sharing and video calls are in demand. We believe that’s the reason you’re a BE customer, because a lot of these things just aren’t possible on a cheap connection. If you can’t tell from the connection, you can definitely tell when something goes wrong and you need to get it fixed.
People who have seen mainstream broadband prices plummet ask "Why pay £20 for something that's available for £5 or for free elsewhere?" Our answer is always that people who rely on their broadband need a better quality service, and they understand what that costs. Getting value for money is not the same as getting it as cheap as possible.
We believe in unlimited and unthrottled broadband and we’re not planning to change that. And when we say unlimited we mean unlimited, not the ‘unlimited’ that is offered by others then throttled so you can’t use it as you want. We believe that’s what our customers want.
Now you’ve heard what we think in 2011, we'd like to hear from you. What can we do to fight the corner of unmanaged, unlimited broadband? How much is a genuinely unlimited, well supported product worth to you?
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50 comments:
It's worth £22.44 a month.
The fact that BE is actually unlimited and never throttled is what drew my flatmate and I to the service and what keeps us subscribing.
It's one of the larger reasons why BE has my business...
It's the main selling point for me being a customer with BeThere.
I'll always happily pay more for an "un-metered" service. The only thing that is making me want to migrate to another provider is the speeds that fibre connections are now being able to provide.
If the services continues to be developed and improved, and gets faster, it is well worth every penny I spend each month.
Previously I paid BT for a service that promised much but delivered little or nothing, nearly destroying my business.
If the infrastructure and network is updated to 2011 standards and protocols, rather than still waiting for 2006 updates, we would all have reliable high speed access rather than the mishmash of copper wire, fibre, and cable running in multiple standards each with it's inherent problems.
I am happy to pay for a unmanaged, unlimited broadband that works as designed and advertised - I will not pay for an 'up to xMb' service that gives just 10% of the speed promised when it works at all.
I don't mind paying a little more but I do expect a truly unlimited unthrottled service with no traffic shaping etc.
And I want a service that isn't going to slow to a crawl once the kiddies log-in after school.
I moved to BE from PlusNet because of their ludicrous limits and whilst I'm very happy with BE as they are now, if I had to pay a little extra to secure continued service as is, then I would.
You get what you pay for and most of us recognise that, with demand for bandwidth increasing as it is, we can't expect to get it all without making it pay for the supplier.
Thanks for all the comments, guys. Just to let you know we're listening and appreciate your thoughts.
I'd like to see all adverts that claim:
"Unlimited bandwidth *
* Fair bandwidth usage policy applies"
to be stomped on by the ASA, I can't understand how they are allowed. That would make people with genuine unlimited services able to advertise more successfully.
Ever since I signed up with Be, my internet experience has changed dramatically, before I had to keep a constant eye on the usage meter with my previous ISP so that I don't go over the limit and being thrown back into the middle ages.
I love that you guys at Be think about the customers experience other than just oversubscribing people so that the service becomes hideous, thats what makes you guys different from other ISP. Its funny that most ISP claims to be 'Unlimited' where infact, its the opposite of that.
I hope you don't plan to introduce any caps,shaping in the near future, if it means with a price increase to keep it unlimited so be it. Theres a old saying, you get what you paid for and Be is certainly the best ISP in the whole of UK right now.
Very happy Be customer. The fact your service is consistently fast and reliable is a real boon to me. It's a totally honest service that has great support back up too. Keep up the good work and I'm happy paying for the service
The unmetered, unmanaged service, along with the excellent support and customer service, is what makes BE the best ISP I've ever had experience with.
I don't think you can put a price on an unmanaged service these days, and those ISPs that can continue to offer it, for home and mobile, are the ones that will thrive. That in itself is a sad reflection on the industry as a whole, but that doesn't change the fact that I will continue to pay what needs to be paid to keep my service unmanaged.
I need an unmetered and unmanaged service. I need it for work. I need it for play. I need it for when I feel like streaming an HD movie with no warning. I need to be able to upload megabytes, or gigabytes, of files while working and not have it impact on my bandwidth later that evening.
The service is worth the premium I pay for it. If it was to change and become limited, throttled and shaped, it would be a worse service than those which are available for free - because the broadband services I can get with my landline, mobile phone, TV package and others also include things like free wifi, IPTV packages, new mobile phones and so on.
So, any change would make the service worse than the free broadband that is available elsewhere. And would make me more likely to switch.
I was previously on Telewest then NTL then Virgin cable, who currently have peak hour throttling for high usage but the throttling isn't prohibitive and is only a few hour time-out for using significant bandwidth (P2P traffic can be shaped on the service for all users). They also explicitly lay out when and how this throttling will be applied for each price level.
When moving to copper wire in a new flat I found most ISPs were significantly worse that my old provider (who have a natural price advantage by not requiring a copper wire / line rental) in terms of limitations put on the connection they provide.
BE are the only company whose name kept on coming back as a recommendation for a genuine ISP. People happy to take money and provide a connection to the internet; no filtering, no worrying about capacity and getting far slower connections because it is the evening and everyone is getting throttled.
Several months in and I'm very happy to pay the small price premium for a good internet connection from BE. I'd much rather that than save a few quid and use someone who wants to sell me a limited connection where their desire to sell TV bundles or simply save money on providing the bandwidth they advertise leaves me with skipping playback on iPlayer or the like.
The fact that Be is truly unlimited and not throttled, is why Im with Be... Since getting a connection with you, I've only ever upgraded my service due to wanting to use the internet more and more...
Please please please dont change it...
I was with BE before I moved to VM for the 50mb service but I am more than happy to join BE once again if they lauch services with faster speeds without any ridiculous restrictions.
I am currently paying VM £42 including the phone line rental and am okay to pay the same.
As a very happy Be customer I choose to stay with you because of your honesty, transparency, great customer service, and reliable, value for money broadband.
The prices are right, but I do hope that BE will soon start offering FTTC stuff. I don't mind paying extra for this, as I'm currently stuck at 5mb down (due to distance to exchange). Apparently Plus.net is charging an extra £12 on top of existing packages. That doesn't sound too unreasonable.
So BE... Please support FTTC.
When I was with Virgin Media 8mbit, I got 800kB/s download from 12am to 4pm on weekdays, and the same from 12am to 10am on weekends. Any other time, I would get 2-5kB/s.
No, not a typo for 25kB/s, 2 to 5 kilobytes per second. As soon as the contract was up, I jumped ship and went with bethere. The first night I downloaded 60GB as a test, and they didn't care and kept providing me with the same amazing broadband service! 1.8MB/s download speeds, delicious.
I would happily pay more for a faster connection, but currently the price is perfect.
Oh, 4:04 here again, just wanted to say I was paying £18/month just for 8mbit from Virgin!
Hi,
I am also a happy customer with 3 subscriptions.
On the 3 subscriptions, 2 are for the business I work for (I am an IT manager) and the two connections together are cheaper than what I used to pay for BT. And I don't even compare the services or speed. With the enhanced uplink (Annex M) we don't even need an SDSL connection, saving us a lot of money.
The other connection is used at home and I am always baffled by the connection speed. I keep recommending BE to all my friends when I am asked which provider they should go to or when they speak about all the problems they’ve got with their current supplier.
But I see at least one point where BE can do better: modems
It has been a pain to setup a PPTP VPN from home because of the Thomson modem router. I had to change the firmware and finally set it up on the bridge mode. I also have issues reaching my work broadband connections from home, also due to a bug on the Thomson routers. I know that the Thomson are good value for money but you should be able to provide an alternative for advance users or businesses.
I also hope that in a near future BE would be able to enter on the WiMAX or FFTH market.
Its a sign of the rest of the industry that while reading this I kept expecting the ..."But" part
Thankfully it never arrived!
I use and have recommended Be to many friends for exactly the reasons you state above. I do not and never will want anyone else interfering with my internet traffic for my "benefit".
I live in a semi-permanent state of fear that Be (since the O2 purchase) will be forced into providing fair-usage caps and limits on its top end product. Please dont ever go there!
Thanks & keep rocking it like you are...
I think be pricing is very competitive and I could actually pay more even for the existing service. Though I'm not saying you should raise the prices :)
If Be* had a fibre optic connection, I'd happily pay up to 50 quid for it.
PLEASE make strides with FTTC. I currently have line bonding and receive 28mbit/2.5mbit speeds which I love. But I want more!
Its not funny that my non technical mother called me the other day to rub it in that she now gets 40down 10up.
Im a geek, I suspect most Be customers are. FTTC is the future and with the financial backing of Telefonica I am very surprised you have not ventured into this arena.
for me, reliability is just as important as speed; there's no point operating a fast service if it's much slower at peak times. i've noticed that bethere goes through waves of a few weeks slowing right down at peak time, then it sorts itself out. personally, i think the pricing is just right at the moment.
i'm happier to pay a little more and know i'm not going to penalised if i decide i want to go and download a whole load of movies one month, rather than rely on the fact that actually i'll probably never do that because i don't tend to download much at all.
basically, i know exactly what i'm paying, and like that.
and i've recommended bethere to several people, not least because of the amount of cashback bethere offers through a well known cashback website ;)
I only left Be because where I live, ADSL is terrible. I hope you guys released a fibre offering soon so I can come right back.
I was paying more for a far inferior service...
Never regretted the move to BE!!
Having a fibre tier would set BE up to be the only rational choice for any technical person, and those they can inform to use. Many others would also love it and it'd be the only real option on the market. Be has the service and the policies, but is hampered by the speeds especially for users that are not too close to exchanges. Fibre would be at a huge cost but as another poster said, Telefonica should be able to back such a move. The revenues in customers leaving other fibre offerings and upgrading to fibre should pay off in time for sure.
If you look at other countries such as Holland and the ISP UPC you can get up to 120Mb/s without restrictions and a good solid service. Be could be the same, the competitors on fibre couldn't compete with the policies Be has or the customer service.
Of all the things our taxes get used to pay for it's beggars belief why a government backed fibre roll out that ISP's can then easily use doesn't just happen. It's a shame that the costs to start providing fibre would be so high for Be but it'd really set Be apart.
As a student house, we use the internet heavily all day (and night!). Having a truly unlimited connection is fantastic for us as we don't have to worry about going over a limit or only doing intensive stuff at certain times of the day.
However, we're moving house next term and our new house is further from the exchange. I really hope that BE offer FTTC by then so we can stay with them.
I tried out BE having seen it was one of the cheapest providers, on a half-price offer, which suited me well when moving into my first flat. I am so happy with the impeccable service that I'm more than happy to renew at full price and keep on paying.
Whenever I've needed to contact support, they've clearly known what they're on about, they haven't spoken like automatons and work hard to get every issue resolved.
I say, just don't change a winning formula. I don't know about the practicalities of this, but if you could also have a 3-month contract deal with the line rental included, that would suit me better.
Thanks for a great service.
I was formerly a BE customer (for about 3 years), but have moved house since and have remained with the existing service provider at my current place. The reason for that is simply due to being able to attain only 9Mbps over ASDL2+ with a passable ISP, and the effort of going over to LLU isn't worth it (whereas at my previous location I got 21Mbps with Be which was amazing).
So, for me, especially as someone involved in software development and often working from home (shifting huge files around frequently), a FTTC connection would be ideal. Given that the new cabinet is also about 30 metres away, it would be more than worth the effort of switching over.
As mentioned by several people in previous posts, I would be willing to pay a premium for high-bandwidth allowances and the additional speed. The only concern I have is that other ISPs such as AAISP have stated that the very high costs of BT's current FTTC network mean that they are unable to offer high bandwidth allowances - even at their extremely high prices.
High bandwidth and generous allowances (or "unlimited"), plus low latency is a great boon for me. Once/If you start FTTC trials or launch a product, I will almost certainly move across. I would just like to see it proven that a group of new very heavy users on FTTC are not going to degrade the overall service by pumping up costs disproportionately.
Perhaps the new BT "virtual LLU" system will help, but who knows.
At any rate, I am sure there are plenty of technically adept people (such as myself), who are interested in being involved in any FTTC trials.
In summary; FTTC with generous allowance, low latency and good reliability. I'm more than willing to pay for the privilege - it is a premium product.
Sorry to double post, but as an addendum:
Providing IPv6 support on your network, and possibly with the routers that you distribute in the future (e.g. Billion 7800N) would set you apart from other large ISPs. Even if you don't want to provide routers with it then it would be superb to have the facility.
I was paying about £21 pm and getting over 18Mbps but now my service has degraded to less than 15Mbps and I still pay the same. I feel a little aggrieved about this. If I wasn't planning to move house this year, I'd be moving to Virgin cable broadband.
astewart post your problem to the BE forum as it can often be easily solved.
The articles about O2 eventually offering free wifi out and about mentions that various partners offer the service already to their customers.
Be nice to have (I have a 2gb fair use on mobile data, but a lot of people have 500mb)
If you expanded into Boston Lincolnshire - EMBOSTO I'd be happy to pay double the price while you get enough lines connected to your equipment to make yourselves profitable. I believe others would welcome tiered pricing if it meant more areas getting access to unlimited broadband.
I have been with many isp, all unlimited (at the time) Uk online, Sky, o2, however Be is great, I have been using BE at my new house for last 3 months.. its excellent 18.5Mbps, The price is good, and be are the first isp to call me on the connection day and and offer support if i needed it.
I think the BeBox could do with an upgrade "n" and maybe gigabit ethernet ports.
I am hopeing that Be roll out FTTC service with true unlimited downloads for £20 than that would be the iceing on the cake :D
I moved to Be from plusnet back in 2007 because they offered adsl2+ on my exchange and ive stayed with them since. Good service fair price.
Regarding 2011 I to would like to see FTTC as I moved from a house 200m from the exchange to 1.9 km and obviously my speed dropped significantly. Other things Id like to see is bolt-on style access to things like Be hosted newsgroups/usenet and web hosting.
Well since ofcom have forced BT to play nice with all there fibre equipment now, I don't see why BE cant use some of this equipment to there advantage. the huge drops in speed are usually from between your local street cabinet to your exchange so why cant BE just connect there bits in the exchange (LLU) to the (FTTC)? I would think that would be the cheapest option. and costs to BT should be minimal. but besides that. I don't care if BT were offering 1Gps (end up being capped in an hour lol), no way am I leaving BE.
£20 for FTTC unlimited??? ISP's have to pay £14 per user to BT so where is the margin to provide unlimited usage?
This blog made my inside geek happy. I'm your customer for life with a business plan like that. I'm happy to pay good money for good service. Please don't let that change.
I have been with Be for 4 or so years on a few different accounts/lines. The reason i first signed up was low ping times to gaming servers/gamers and the increased upload. The unlimited was a huge bonus.
Over the years, I've come to realize what a precious thing truly "unlimited" broadband is. Because I've come across so many internet users who moan about throttling p2p, gaming and downloads. But i can say with certainty that my Be service has always been unlimited and almost 100% reliable throughout.
But coming in to 2011, I'm at a crossroads. Do i choose download speed and a new technology (FTTC) over Be's ADSL2+ 6Mb unlimited and reliable service? I think i might have to. Unlimited broadband is excellent, but downloading/uploading at 6x my current speed is something i couldn't pass up.
The perfect scenario would be for Be to develop a FTTC (BT) package that stays unlimited with a FUP. I would realistically be happy to pay £35/month for this. I wouldn't expect prices to stay the same.
be and o2 sould work together to bring FTTH to there customers as o2 are a big company now and i think it would save money in the long run easy to look after and more people moveing over and i do agree with ever one i was with bt but i was always over the download limt and thats why i join be and and never look back
if BE could do a unlimited fibre package, I would agree, £35 a month would be a low price to pay.
Aside from a venerable old be* boxes quirks and the odd manual entering of DNS details Be is perfect for me.
The main issue is that other ISPs don't charge enough to keep a decent infrastructure in place. With inflation, VAT and other pressures no wonder other ISPs and networks are faltering.
If Be are up front and say we need £25 to give you service you can't get anywhere else. Then I'd pay that. If you offered a kick ass FTTC service then I'd pay more.
Just keep up the good work.
Thanks guys - still lots of comments coming in! We're listening and appreciate them all :)
Its all about being unlimited for me. I'm not a huge bandwidth user but I like to think i can do anything with my connection, especially on the upload side.
I wouldn't mind paying extra for VDSL either.
I guess all this is your way of justifying scrapping the £7 value 40Gb package, which for the record I was perfectly happy with!
I can see why you stopped offering the package, but I don't get why you felt the need to take it away from existing customers, there wasn't even a "sorry, here's 3-6 months at the same price on the uncapped package to soften you up a bit" offer. Just a "pay us double or sod off" note, with no explanation. Not so great customer service/relations.
Running the £7 value package clearly wasn't viable any more. You were given the opportunity to cancel with no quibbles as per your contract - I doubt it's a decision that Be took lightly.
As for me, I'm amazingly happy with my Be Unlimited service. Sure, I get people on Virgin talking about how amazingly fast their service is, but I love the fact that I *never* get capped regardless of what I do, and that I don't have to think about what time of day it is when I download something. I used to be on the Virgin 20mbit service and get capped on a regular basis just for using it. It also cost £10/month more than Bethere does for me. I say keep up the good work, Be, and just bear in mind that you probably have a lot of customers who'd be willing to pay a little more to keep the service in its current state if things ever get really tight.
I agree with what most people have said.
Keep up the amazing service and not throttling my usage and I will never have to consider leaving. Especially if you manage to boost the speeds (living far from the exchange still gives me about 8Mbps :<) I'd totally pay more!
I was forced to leave BE last year as i moved home. Not by choice may i add. Nobody has touched their upload speeds/service. The house i moved into had Sky. Sky owned the line from the previous household. Faced with a £125 reconnection charge, i ended up going with Plusnet as they reconnected me for free (12mth contract). I wished BE had of done this, i would of signed to a 2 year contract just to get the free reconnect!!.
I have been counting the months to that i can leave and go back to BE. I miss the upload, i miss a service where i dont have to keep logging in to see if i surpassed my limits. I work in IT and i require a fast connection to do what i want and my family. To me the £20/£30 odd charge is worth it. Everything revolves around data these days, so pays to have a decent service. I really do prey that BE dont fall prey to the penny coffing execs to sqeeze bandwidth as i think companies like BE are a dying breed. Keep up the good work BE, i'll be back in September 2011.
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