It’s been a typically busy week here in Sheffield and obviously it’s Children in Need today! Not that we need an excuse but we’ve all been getting in the spirit by stuffing our faces with a variety of savory and sugary goods.  Nom Nom Nom… I’ll let this weeks posters tell you more!

First we have Kev reporting from Business Support…

This is written by Kev and I will not mention football or hands. I have been on the business team for 3 weeks on a 4 week secondment and enjoying the different variety of roles you do whilst on this very busy team.

This week has been very busy mainly due to the extremely bad weather over the last 3 – 4 days. This has caused a variety of issues with broadband lines and phone lines which has caused an increase in calls and faults being raised. This has made this week particularly stressful as there just don’t seem to be enough time to do everything.

We have been in a charitable mood today as it is children in need, we have purchased home made cakes and other goodies that other members of staff have cooked, all to raise money for children in need. This does man that the diet goes out the window but it is for a good cause after all.

Well I have to go now to deal with the faults that have been raised.

Kev.

Gemma from HR next.. looks like Jen has a week off EOW duty…

So, its Children in need, cakes have been made and cakes have been eaten. There were even mini pizzas, pigs in blankets and home made bread up for grabs…..yum.

And while all this was going on, Jen was helping to get things sorted for Gavin Patterson’s visit today. Gavin is the CEO of BT retail. He presented a Retail update to everyone this afternoon and held an open Q & A session. Plusnet can be a tough crowd but he kept his cool!

There has also been a lot of work done collating Company information for the Best Companies survey. We may have mentioned this in previous weeks, and yes were still working on it however it’s a micro detail questionnaire and we want Plusnet to be reflected in its true glory.

There was some interesting discussion earlier this week when Therese and I ran a workshop for managers on dealing with difficult situations. We’re running another one next week, so until next week, hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

Gem and the HR team.

Here’s Neil with an update from Networks…

Networks were very very busy this week, we’ve got some cakes to eat/eaten some cakes from the Children in Need cake sale and now it’s the weekend.

Apart from cakes however, We’ve done lots of work this week to try and resolve the problems with network performance, more details on this can be seen on service status and on the priority problem on the website and we’ve been continuing on our plans for network capacity for the next 15 months.

We also been bashing though the usual tickets and problems

Anyways it’s time to go to the pub.

Have a good weekend all.

Last but not least, here’s Orbrey from Com…Digital Care…

It’s been a week of illness in Digital Care this week. Chris, Bob and Andy have been coughing and hacking and sneezing at the desk, and Mand wasn’t feeling too good this afternoon. Likewise I’ve been having hot flushes and feeling dizzy. Thankfully it’s Friday, though it’s sad there’ll be no beer o’ clock today.

It’s a busy time for us at the moment, lots of forum posts to pick up and all sorts of comms to do of both internal and external varieties. It’s been nice to make posters for a change too, and a great way to let the rest of the business know about any changes we’re making.

Not to mention the cake sale for Children in Need today.

I thought I told you not to mention that?

Cheers all. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll see you bright and breezy on Monday morning.

Lovely.. you can see what the impact the bake-off’s had.. EVERYONE mentioned it – that doesn’t even happen in the Summer when we’re all melting!

On the topic of weather, it’s been a typically wet and wintering week here and while I’d normally moan about that I won’t today today as there’s a lot worse going on  further up north in Cumbria.  We saw similar scenes around here a few years ago and I’m sure I speak for all here at Plusnet when I wish those affected well, and hope they can get through the next few weeks safe and well.

That’s all this week folks.

See ya!

So much for the diet eh folks?

 Pictured:  Here’s Ali buying a Pudsey bun.

This Sunday is going to be a big day for TV, at 7pm there’s the new episode of Doctor Who, at 8pm X-Factor and at 9pm a choice of the new series of Top Gear and the new series of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here amongst others. Both Doctor Who and Top Gear will be in HD too.

So how is this going to affect us?

Well in the past we’ve seen a little dip in traffic when Doctor Who is on then traffic starts to rise again while there’s a sizeable increase in iPlayer traffic, especially the last special as that was the first in HD. Top Gear we saw a massive increase in iPlayer for the last series so we’re expecting even more this time around. With it being in HD and an hour later and with I’m a Celebrity on at the same time we’re expecting as much if not more so on Monday as people watch it the next day rather than staying up.

Whatever happens, it’s going to be interesting. We’ve made some backend changes to our network configurations so that we’re prepared. The changes mean that network can allocate the bandwidth in the most appropriate way depending on how much demand there is for iPlayer to ensure the the streams work OK. The changes will also mean that at the same time ensure for those people browsing, using VPN or other interactive traffic also don’t see any major issues either. Some people may see a reduction in speeds particularly downloads or from speedtests but the priority will be to ensure that interactive traffic like browsing and streaming will be fine.

We’ll post an update on Monday or Tuesday showing what we saw and how much traffic everything did.

Dave Tomlinson

Plusnet Network Transformation

Miaow from some black cats and on with the show!!!! First up, Jen in HR:

Once upon a time in Plusnet Land, in the year of Two Thousand and Nine, the thirteenth day of the eleventh month fell on a Friday. Folklore around these parts tells of very strange happenings upon this day. Indeed, the HR team can atest to this.
All day, strange noises have been interrupting out attempts to complete our Best Companies application. Icy breezes have been fluttering the pages of our new starter documents. Gremlins have been interfering with our computers and old references we typed months ago have been spluttered out of the printer. Numbers were appearing where they shouldn’t be on spreadsheets and no-one seemed to know why *cough*. If you do dare to step out upon this eve…take care! After all, it is Friday the Thirteenth!

Next up, it’s me!

I tried to reverse delegate this update back up to my manager, but he cleverly convinced me that I was definitely best placed to write the Business Improvement team update. I think that’s why he’s in charge.

Anyway, this week I’ve picked up a couple of new areas. One biggy is knowledge management. Might sound dull, but actually, good knowledge management is key to helping our business grow – and making sure we deliver excellent customer service. I’ll be spending time over the next few months working on a strategy and helping deliver a solution that means all our Plusnet knowledge is held in an easy to use, easy to access format and of course is up to date.

I’m also going to pick up reporting around ‘one contact resolution’. This term is all about us, more than ever, trying to resolve customer issues first time round. If you only have to contact us once, or we only have to contact you once, you get a better service and we are able to run a more efficient business – which again, ultimately benefits you, our customer. Clearly we won’t be able to fix every single issue with just one call or ticket, but by carefully monitoring where we are up to and challenging the status quo, we’ll know where to focus on to reduce the amount of contacts a customer has to make.

This ties nicely into some work that James K is doing around our provisioning process (i.e. setting up new broadband/home phone for customers), to improve the automation and improve the speed at which we can supply new services. He’s working closely with the Dev team to improve processes that are not fully automated or simply take too long. It’s a huge piece of work but we’re already seeing improvements. Good effort!

Up next is Mand in Digital Care (nee Comms):

Today (and forever more, sob) we’re a man down, as James has now officially left the building. We said goodbye to him in traditional Comms style yesterday (click here) and today many will be saying goodbye to him in traditional Plusnet style, that is to say, at the pub.

Today was otherwise filled with taunting our boss with sausage rolls (when we weren’t convincing everyone they were in fact apples), Matt placing orders, Bob and me going ‘raaaaaaaaa’, Chris scaping the debate, and Andy going down the only road he’s ever known. Apparently. (According to Andy, it’s this road)

The rest of the week was filled with happiness and joy. Or possibly bitterness and anger. I don’t know, as I spent most of it not here. I’m fairly sure it would have involved laughing at Bob, copious amounts of coffee, frogs-in-blenders*, whining, SQL errors, and darkness.

*at no point was a frog actually put in a blender.

Well, that’s good news, Mand! Next we have Andy in the Consumer team:

Consumer team returned to full strength this week, much to the relief of the head honcho who had been quietly going mad over the course of the last week or so. Unfortunately for Chris he has been plunged back into a world of Jimmy Choos and Lady GaGa, so he’s ready for another week off already!

In terms of actual work, we’ve been exceptionally busy directing the Crayola team with some large-scale colouring in, as well as working closely with our delightful Web Team, who’ve worked very hard putting together a plethora of lovely looking webby things for us. In the midst of all that, the tyrannical trio have been Taxed trying to Add Value, and look set to be for some time. Busy, busy times indeed.

Finally, and no means leastly (err, that’s not even a word!), it’s Nick in Faults, back with us after a rather nice trip abroad:

Howdy all! Good to be back in the UK after a fun packed 10 day trip to Vegas – although the cold/jetlag combination is not the greatest feeling in the world… I’ve been switching between dog tired and incredibly hyper. Add to that it’s Friday 13th and I’m definitely feeling strange today

So back into faults! Got back in and picked up where I left off with those faults which have been ongoing for a while – and was pleased to see there was only one customer still without internet when I got back, it bodes well for the week!

Things are going well with our new team member Craig, too. He’s one of the most experienced agents from the tech teams and to be honest has been spending a lot of time doing faults these last few months anyway. Although he does keep beating me at pool, which really has to stop.

Faults wise, it’s pretty much been business as usual, trying to keep on top of the intermittent connection faults is the biggest challenge as always, but we’re getting there. I’ve been handling escalations all week, trying to keep people in the loop and generally trying to tie up long standing faults. I’ve also been looking through our satisfaction survey feedback (thanks to all of you who fill those out – they really do help) and while it’s generally very positive, I’ve taken your suggestions for improvement and passed them onto management to hash out the details of what we need to do better. All in the name of progress!

Not enjoying this getting-dark-at-4pm rubbish. What’s that all about? Seriously, it’s not on. Roll on the Spring!

Thank you, everyone. And I TOTALLY agree with Nick about darkness. Rubbish!!! All that remains for me to do is not get run over on the way home (or to the pub, to meet Mr Bailey) and wish you all a fantastic weekend!

Ali McGowan

For almost a month now, we’ve been offering new phone line installations at a special low price of just £49.99 to our home broadband customers.  That’s less than half of the wholesale cost.

Now there’s even better news. We’re extending the offer right through until the 31st January 2010.
If you need to, now is the perfect time to get one installed – just call our sales line on 0845 140 0200 and we’ll do the rest.

Remember, you get a regular monthly discount for every person you refer to us who goes on to become a customer. Find out about My Referrals.

8 things…

A long time ago in a galaxy far, …err, sorry, back in September, we kicked off a little competition to win an iPod, linked in with our first big advertising campaign in t’Big Smoke. For those of you that haven’t yet become completely bored with the ‘London Calling’ blog entry that’s been lingering on here for weeks, you can refresh your memory here.

The competition has now closed, and a winner has been picked. We had some great entries, as well as a handful of efforts that would make even Jedward blush, but the judges were able to reach a verdict without deferring to the public vote. Congratulations are therefore in order for Sarah Smith and her list of 8 fun things she’d recommend that you do before you die, reproduced here for you to draw inspiration from:

• Join a flash mob- Flash mobs have become a worldwide phenomena in which a large group of unrelated, essentially random, people all converge in one place, perform an unusual action for a short time, and disburse again. Flash Mobs were invented in 2003 in Manhattan, but they can now be found in almost every city in the world. In 2006 the London Underground was overtaken by 4,000 people who all silently danced to their iPods. More recently T-mobile featured one in their ad campaign. Absolutely awesome, wholesome, fun! Join up here.
• Be a nude model- This one may be a little risky, but it is worth it for the story you can tell your friends (and possibly your family!) afterwards… Look up your local art class (or possibly an art class in the next town or city if you are really scared!) and offer your services. Then simply turn, up, strip and bare! Very liberating, and you will even get paid for it J
• Go to a film premiere- This one is an easy task for most people living in California, but not so easy for people in the UK, outside of London! But I would say it is even worth the airfare to get to a premiere if you can afford it. I recently met Tom Cruise (seriously! And even managed a brief chat with him. The spend was worth it for the subsequent kudos and Facebook status updates (with pics!))…… Who knows, maybe a superstar will see you and fall in love with you (that didn’t happen to me, alas).
• Invent something- We live in a fast paced society where gadgets exist for virtually every task –occasionally you might have a Eureka! Moment where you think of that genius idea, which nobody has yet invented. Don’t just let the thought go, why not try your hand at inventing it? Just remember, as soon as you have completed your invention, patent it and give it a fab name. Who knows, if you don’t make a mint out if it, you might still make it onto Dragon’s Den!
• Stay in the best suite- This is something you have to do at least once in your life. Save up your mullah and book a night at the poshest hotel in your city – or better still, go to a different/bigger city, and book the most expensive suite. While you are there make sure you saved enough cash to tip well (it gives you a sense of enormous well-being, as per Blur’s Parklife!) and to enjoy all of the benefits of the hotel – like fabulous food, massages, pool, and spa. There is nothing grander than waking up in a magnificent penthouse suite with a hangover. Just remember, if you steal the bath towels or dressing gown you may find an unexpected bill turning up on your credit card the following month J
• Participate in a police lineup- Volunteer at your local cop shop to participate in a lineup. It’s a bit of fun, if you like that sort of thing, and you sometimes get a free lunch as well as your fee for taking part… of course, when offering your services – make sure you didn’t commit the crime! For added ‘lol’ value, wear something fun like a T-shirt that says ‘I did it’ and be sure to look shifty. A novel experience.
• Invent a cocktail- Who doesn’t love a good cocktail? There are thousands of spirits, liqueurs and other alcoholic concoctions, out there for the tasting – so go to an off-license, stock up, and try as many variations as you can! Make a night of it with some friends, you are bound to stumble upon a masterpiece to showcase next time you have a party. Remember to keep a bucket handy – after a night of tasting cocktails you will need it.
• Do a skydive- Jumping out of a plane sounds like something you might actually die whilst doing, doesn’t it?! Better make it last on the list then! Seriously though, with a proper instructor, preferably in a scenic place, this will be something you will want to repeat again and again….If you do decide to give it a go, I would recommend that you shave off any facial hair you may have for extra speed J

Thanks to all entrants for taking the time to put together your lists. Here’s a handful of the best ones:

Susie Chambers likes to dial it up all the way to 11, even on a school night:

• Sleeping under the stars because as you doze off it’s like looking at the biggest screen in the world!
• Not scheduling in more than one trip out on weekend days because otherwise you don’t get any “you time”.
• Watching the film ‘Spinal Tap’ because it’s a classic and to start with you don’t know whether it’s a spoof or not.
• Visiting Disneyland before you die because all of us want to be kids forever deep down!
• Learning to play a musical instrument because it’s great therapy if you’re feeling down.
• Telling your children, if you have any, that you love them because so many people forget to just come out and say it and it matters so much for children to know they’re loved.
• Warn people you go out drinking with whether you’re a person (like me!) to get carried away with the music and end up randomly dancing on your own on the dance floor because it’s important to remember to head home before 3am, especially if you’ve got work the next day!
• Always look for opportunities to learn because we’re so blessed to have these opportunities in our society whereas in other areas of the world people just don’t get the chance.

Phil Darling has some unorthodox efficiency savings to offer to help get through the credit crunch:

• Go Bald – I can recommend this as all the ladies love a baldy, and if all else fails you can do an impression of a walnut every time you look up.
• Don’t eat anything brown – Most things brown are poisonous, and the things that aren’t are probably not very good for you.
• Never answer the phone after 7.00pm – it will be a nice gentleman that insists you need new windows or that your life insurance isn’t up to date
• Never polish your car – it is a proven fact that if you polish your car it will rain within the hour. Also a shiny car is more attractive to a thief
• Put your socks on while sitting on the toilet – can save valuable time in the morning if you hit the snooze button once too often
• Eat at least one curry a week (as long as its not brown, see (2))- helps the digestive tract deal with the rigors of life
• Don’t howl at the moon – it worries the neighbours and isn’t clever.
• Expectant fathers watch the Simpsons – provides valuable parental advice for fathers. Just follow Homers example, I have and my kids are great.

Daniel doesn’t like Mondays, but clearly loves his ergonomic management style keyboard, given that ‘suck-up’ final recommendation:

• Peep Show. It’s back, it’s British and it’s still the funniest thing on TV. Proof that everything is more entertaining in the first person.
• Tuesdays. They give you the longest period of time until the next Monday.
• The Nintendo Wii. Trust good old Nintendo to make computer games sociable, popular and even healthy in one swoop. Plus no more repetitive strain in my thumb (and only a little tennis elbow!)
• Lolcats. Funny pictures of cats. Needz Iz say morre?
• http://www.saynoto0870.com. A great money saver, this lists a free alternative to almost any expensive 0870 number you can think of.
• Google Earth. You’d never wondered what a bird’s eye view of your house would look like but now it’s been invented I bet you really want to see it!
• The Nectar card keyring tag. Not just a regular Nectar card but if you lose your keys, the finder can send them back to the free Nectar address and the nice people there will return them to you. Peace of mind and points for my shopping.
• Your nice cheap value broadband. Call me a suck up if you like but it’s cheap, it’s fast, it has a decent download limit and it works. I use it and who are you to say I’m wrong?!

Sonja is never knowingly undersold:

• Mytholm mist beer – because it is gorgeously smooth and refreshing.
• Dishwasher – a Bosch one because they are very energy efficient and quiet and who in this day and age actually wants to wash up?
• Ebuyer – Great products at fantastic prices, most products are reviewed and they even include bad reviews if they are appropriate. Also they are based in Sheffield and you can talk to a real person if you want.
• Goosedown duvet – so warm and snuggly and lightweight if you buy an expensive one.
• Hotel Chocolat – once you’ve tried them you will not want to go back to cheap chocolate. A small piece goes a long way.
• Sockies – saves hours matching up socks especially good in a household of 4 when you all have black socks – they mean that your socks stay together as a pair through the wash and tumble drier and each person has their own colour of sockie so they can be easily sorted. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to track any down for a while, they used to have them in Asda and Lakeland.
• Lakeland Ltd – Fantastic cookware and innovative products. Their staff are second to none and if you haven’t managed to get what you visited the store for they will send it on to you. They also offer a money back guarantee if you are not happy with anything you have bought no matter how long ago you bought it – amazing!
• John Lewis – they have seemingly happy, well trained and knowledgeable staff and it shows. A shopping trip to any John Lewis store is always a pleasure as the shops are well laid out, clean and have no clutter.

Paul Bennett is no doubt making the most of our Twitter feed:

• http://www.twitter.com a fun, easy to use, positive (so far!) and amazingly powerful social network site- get feedback / mass action on a query / complaint etc, often from the main man/woman in charge!  Loads of celebs use it too, and reply to their fans’ messages too- way cool!
• http://www.saynoto0870.com find cheaper landline numbers for a lot of UK firms that use (and retain a slice of the call costs) a higher rate phone number, just to call them- that’s before you even get to buy something you want!
• Automated phone banking- None of this press 1 for some unhelpful oik, or queuing for ages, etc- just call up, verify ID etc, get balance, transfer money, etc..
• http://www.freecycle.org Give a new lease of life to your unwanted items, instead of throwing them away, which means they eventually end up in nasty, overfull landfill sites.. everything is free- you offer, someone local collects! You can also find some great items, too- most towns/cities have their own collective, on yahoo groups.
• http://www.google.com/maps Quickly find a destination (AND the easist way there from another point, by car / public transport, or even walking!)
• http://www.funkylunch.com Some great pics, of inspiring food ideas!
• http://inter.scoutnet.nl/morse/morseform.html A free, fun (and probably useful too!) morse code translator. useful for sending secret messages that you dont want people to realise.. unless they know morse code of course).
• http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/ Some great online games- try the devilish connect4!)

Naturally, I couldn’t close without a shameless plug for our own products. If you’re with Plusnet for Home Phone, you won’t really need ‘Say No To 0870’, as 0845 and 0870 calls are now bundled in the inclusive call time for both our talk plans. Find out more here.

Boring legal bit – please note that whilst I’ve checked the links and everything looks above board, ultimately Plusnet are not responsible for the content of external sites.

Customers connecting to the new segment will see their traffic routed through the gateway known as thn-ag2.

Whilst on the topic we also increased the bandwidth available on our 21CN network earlier today, this will benefit our Up to 20Mbps ADSL2+ customers and any ‘Up to 8Mbps’ customers who we recently emailed about moving across to the 21CN network.

Remember remember the 6th of November, because it’s the day that system problems prevented Andrew from posting when he wanted to earlier resulting in it being done much later than he originally planned!

Never mind.. on with the show as they say and firstly while you can always rely on HR, we’ve decided to give them a week off so we’ll instead start with Rowan from the Durban branch of the CSC…

Hi all,

Well… THEY PICKED ME to complete the end of week post on behalf of the CSC SA. Yippee… I haven’t done this in a while so please bear with me.

This has been a great week thus far and the weather has been ‘oh so nice’ to run off to the beach. This has been quiet a busy week for the Customer Services Team, the guys have worked really hard pushing out those tickets and answering those calls daily but making sure that it’s done in a fun jovial environment. I’m really proud of all the guys on the floor for pulling together and meeting our SLA’s and Key Performance Indicators so a big up to the team. Sadly, Preeshan our new Customer Service Manager was out on his own this week whilst the others were on study leave. Luckily Sameer, Dev and Ronel (The other Customer Service Team Leader’s) were on hand to assist him with the workload.

This weekend’s going to be really great after a long hard week so we are all really looking forward to it. Lastly, not forgetting our guest from Sheffield, Brad who is here on a training mission and strangely enough is turning a bright pink color due to the famous Durban sun!!

Anyway, that’s it for me. Cheers all.

Be cool stay safe and sooner than you realise, it’ll be Christmas already!!!

Rowan (on behalf of the SA Customer service team)

Sun? What is this Sun you speak of Rowan?  Nothing but rain and more rain in Sheffield this week, I am officially jealous!

Here’s Duffy with a quick update from an unusually quiet Web Team…

Afternoon all, Duffy here. Another busy week for the team, though we’re down a couple of bodies today, Sam being off and Nick being poorly. Get well soon!

Gary has been busily mocking up, erm, mockups. Jonny has been getting into his new role as receptionist – hopefully he’ll have a better appreciation of what the regulars have to do (hopefully his tache growing exploits are amusing the vistors to Plusnet towers, it’s only been a few days so it might be too soon – ed).

I’m trying to learn more XHTML/CSS skills so I can use crayons as well as pencils in my day-to-day job. Nick was doing some project work and we’re working on getting problem management moved from me to him.

And Phill, well, Phill once again… *tumbleweed*

I shall see if we can get some charity tache action up in a blog sometime soon, no promises at this stage.. perhaps if we make enough noise about it?

Moving on and here’s Tommo with an update from Networks…

Ah, the End of Week, and coincidentally it’s the end another week. It’s dark and miserable out so must be getting near to Christmas. So what’s been happening in the world of networks.

Unfortunately I only got the nudge to draft something for the end of week after hometime ticked around so I will have to be a bit briefer about the network activities this week.

There’s been lots of work going off to resolve the speed and performance issues that some of our customers have been seeing, we’ve seen some steady improvements through the week but there’s still more work to be done as we evaluate the success of each change.

Our migration of customers from our LLU network is almost complete, the last of the customers were migrated this week and we are now just in the mop up phase before final decommission.

And that’s all from us for this week, have a great weekend, enjoy the fireworks…

And last but by no means least, here’s Matt with the goings on from the land of Comms Analog Hate Digital Care…

Hi, everybody! I’m not Dr. Nick. Sorry for any disappointment.

Well, the week in Comms. We’ve had a few people off this week – Poor Chris has hurt his foot, and Pete’s been training. As ever we remain resolute in the face of such adversity.

Well, there’s been a fair old bit of work relating to 21CN (that’s the new up to 20Mb broadband) and as ever a lot of forum work. We’ve also (well, mainly Bob, but the rest of us too) been helping out where we can with the network too and are happy to report it’s behaving much better. We’ll keep you posted via the forums and of course the service status feed.

Not much more to report and as it’s Friday and beer o’clock it’s time for the off.

Thanks all.

That’s it for today!  Ta-ta and toodle pip.

It’s been a nice week off (cheers Kelly) but I’m back in the chair again for this weeks End of Week posting.

It’s been a hectic day (and week come to think of it) for me personally, lots of stuff published and lots of things to keep tabs on.

I’ll come back to that in a minute as Carrie from the Sales team wants to post!

Hi Everyone Its Halloween!!!!!

What a busy week we’ve had in the sales team. Its been a challenge with the amount of calls and with the BT/Manpower guys gone we’ve had to work even harder to make sure where taking every call that comes in, also everyone has had to work harder to finish sign up no macs and contact sales as we have had a big increase on these. Also a few of us have been trained on COT which has been really good to learn a different job and the COT guys have been really helpful on when we’ve asked them questions and also they’ve worked hard to increase the conversion rate on retains which have been fantastic.
We are so glad its friday, a weekend of rest, well for some of us and where expecting to have a really busy week again next week which is so exciting to sign up more customers.

Have a great weekend and don’t scare too many people.

It’s Haloween? I completely forgot! – I’ll have to keep an eye out for the hordes of dressed up students that will no doubt be flooding the streets and bars around my home right now..

On with the show and as somebody famous once said, you can always rely on HR, take it away Jen…

Haven’t done an acrostic for a while so here goes…
All of us have had a busy week
Loads of recruitment activity has been happening
Levels for performance reviews have been submitted
Of course it was Laura’s birthday on Monday, belated wishes!
We set up the Company Induction for Monday
Employee relations has been taking up Gemma’s time
Employee engagement has been taking up mine, trying to get all our company information submitted to Best Companies
Now it’s the weekend, phew. Nearly witching hour!! WHooooooo.

How on earth could I forget about Halloween? Never mind.

Right, back to me to finish off.  I think PJ was going to mention this in last weeks post but he forgot! – We’ve launched a new Windows 7 support section, take a look! We’ll be expanding it as time and needs dictate and we’ve already started this with our Windows 7 shortcut keys guide over in the Community Library!  Keep your eyes peeled for more to come.

Also there’s been a few of you worried about Wireless Security following last nights Watchdog.  We’ve updated our guide on Wi-Fi security in response to this, read Chris’s blog to find out more.

That’s all there’s time for today, see you next week!

Affectionately named ‘Plusnet 15′, we’ve already lit half of the new pipe (2 x 155Mbps segments) and have customers connecting to it as I type. If you do manage to get onto the new central then you’ll find that your traffic routes through the gateway known as thn-ag2.

This extra capacity will help us resolve the recent complaints of slow speeds during the evening, something we’ve been chronicling over on our Service Status feed.