Network changes
Over the next 6 months there are a lot of changes happening within our network. Almost every component in our broadband services are being changed, moved or upgraded. We are investing in new equipment, links, data centre racks and software to provide a better service to our customers. We already have new giga-bit fibre links to BT in place and triallists for fast ADSL2+ (sync up to 24Mb/s) broadband services connected and testing the new service.
This means:-
New faster 24Mb/s broadband services starting from around August 2008
More capacity in our network allowing expansion without compromising quality of service
A range of new services launched later in the year such as VoIP priority traffic
Price reductions for broadband services as we upgrade and move customers
Price reductions
We know that customers have long been waiting for price reductions. They key factor for us is reducing costs and this is done by switching to new giga-bit fibre links to BT which are cheaper to run. Our expectations have slipped as we originally hoped to be trialling these last year, however BT are finally making progress. The latest news is that we expect to be able to turn off the old links some time in November which is when we finally start reducing our costs. This means that we are in a position to actually reduce some prices just at a time when there is talk within the industry of ISPs increasing prices.
We plan to regrade customers automatically to ADSL2+ (as available) starting in August but this is subject to exchange upgrade. The roll out for the whole country continues for several years. We will contact customers in advance and you can decide not to go ahead with the free regrade if you wish. Once regraded you will be on our new tariffs with lower prices and (in some cases) higher usage allowances.
We plan to switch off our old links to BT as soon as possible – this is expected some time in November. At that point remaining customers will be moved to the new tariffs even though not yet regraded to ADSL2+. We will then continue regrading customers to ADSL2+ as available.
The planned new tariffs are published on our web site http://aaisp.net.uk/wbcprice.html
As well as lower prices and (in some cases) increased usage allowance the new tariffs also have a new fairer system for carry over of usage allowing under usage and over usage to be carried forward to the next month. This is described on the web page as well.
Note that we are not planning to regrade or change tariffs for customers that are not on our Max services (i.e. those on old fixed 500K, 1M, and 2M broadband services). Such customers can change to Max and new usage based charging free of charge at any time. |