News New tariffs for 2010
We are improving our tariffs for the new year. The changes are necessary to allow us to pass on some savings we are getting on some of the costs for some of our services. They allow us to operate different services at different prices more easily. We have also tried to make them as simple as we can to understand.
The new tariffs come in early December and we are updating our web site with all of the details. This means most customers will see the new tariff on their 1st January bills.
We are also taking the opportunity to make our ordering system much better, more interactive and clearer. It has been a challenge to make a system that is easy for a single line home users to use as well as a customer with dozens of sites and lines.
How it works
Instead of gigabytes of peak download in one part of the tariff and gigabytes of evening/weekend download in another we are making the tariffs a simple single number of units per month. Some people prefer the term credits, but basically a unit is an amount of download tariff which is used up at a different rate depending on when you download and your line type. A unit is at least one gigabyte of peak time download.
Changing from existing tariffs
Existing tariffs move to the new tariffs very simply. Each gigabyte of peak tariff counts as one unit. Each 100GB of off peak tariff also counts as a unit. The special case is basic customers with 1G peak and 50G off peak move to 2 units instead of 1.5 units. You can have a whole number of units in your tariff (minimum 2 units per month). This change works out at the same price (within a few pence).
What that means is you can download as much as you did before and be within your tariff which is the same price as before. In some cases people can change to a lower tariff as a result of this change. Whereas before people that did not use their service during one part of the day lost that even if they used it a lot in another part of the day - now with units you can effectively trade off usage between peak and off peak times.
Am I better off?
We believe everyone will be better off. The catch is that rounding means that the new tariff will be within a few pence of the old tariff. The other catch is that night time (2am to 6am) does now count a very small part towards the usage tariff whereas before it did not count at all - though at 1000GB per unit we don't expect anyone to be worse off. Please do bear in mind the change in VAT will mean what you pay is higher anyway and would have been even if we had not changed the tariffs.
Because the new tariffs come in during December you will have the chance to adjust your monthly tariff before your 1st January billing. The new order pages are in use now, and you can select your new units tariff.
How much do you get per unit
The number of gigabytes of download you get per unit depends on the type of line and time of day.
| Line Type | Gigabytes per units | Line-only Monthly | Line +2 units Monthly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peak 9am-6pm Mon-Fri | Off Peak All other times | |||
| BT 20CN | 1 | 50 | £11.95† | £17.95† |
| BT 21CN | 2 | 100 | £11.95† | £17.95† |
| BT FTTC | 2 | 100 | £21.98† | £27.98† |
| Be line | 8 | 125 | £32.07† | £38.07† |
Your usage does not have to be whole units at certain times, you can use some of a unit during the day and some in the evening, etc.
How much is a unit
There is a minimum of two units a month of pre-paid usage. Each pre-paid unit in your tariff costs £3.00/unit pcm† so the minimum usage charge per month is £6.00/2unit pcm† on top of the line only charge for the service. The cost for the line only (i.e. extra lines on a site) is going down as well so that the total price for customers stays the same when they move to the new system.
What if you use too much or too little?
This is the same as before but with units. We allow some give and take on your usage. If you use less than your pre-paid tariff then the under usage carries over to the next billing period, but there is a limit to this. The limit is the monthly tariff. So if you have a 3 unit/month tariff and only use 1 unit you carry over 2 under used units and so have 5 for the next month. If you only use 1 unit that month too, you would carry over 4 under used units, but this is instead limited to the 3 units you have as a tariff. This means you start the next month with 6 units available, 3 from your tariff and 3 carried forward. This means you can have up to twice your tariff available at the start of each billing period.
If you use too much then over usage is carried over. Again, this is limited to the same as your tariff. If you use too much then you pay for the excess at £4.99/unit†.
The usage is all metered to the byte, and carry over from one bill to the next as well as excess usage charging is done in 0.01 unit steps. So you don't pay for a whole extra unit just for using part of it.
