A Sheffield-founded UK broadband and phone provider, owned by BT since 2007 and known for its Yorkshire roots.
Plusnet is a UK internet service provider that sells home broadband, fibre broadband and landline phone services. Customers pay Plusnet for a package, and the connection itself runs over the national network. The company has also supplied its Hub Two router to customers. In the past it also ran a TV service and a mobile service, both of which have now closed (TV in 2021, mobile in 2024), which shows that even well-known telecoms brands change what they offer over time.
The company's roots go back to 1997, when an internet business called Force9 was split to form Plusnet Technologies, which opened in Sheffield that November. Paul Cusack, who founded the parent company, was chairman, and Lee Strafford was managing director for most of its growth. It launched 512 kbit/s ADSL broadband in 2000 and floated on the stock market in 2004. BT bought it in January 2007 but kept it as a separate brand. In 2018 it moved into BT's consumer division alongside BT and EE. We could not find a formal mission statement; its adverts used the line "Good Honest Broadband from Yorkshire" in 2010 and "We'll do you proud" in 2012.
Plusnet is headquartered in Sheffield, where it began at Internet House, Victoria Quays. Wikipedia says that in November 2019 about 1,600 employees in Sheffield and Leeds were announced to transfer to BT in February 2020. This means that the company's UK presence is mostly in Yorkshire, which is useful if you want to work in a major telecoms business without moving to London.
On culture, the main evidence we found is the company's own Yorkshire branding, which signals that it wants to be seen as friendly and straightforward. We did not find first-party descriptions of its working environment. Teams in a broadband provider typically cover customer service and technical support, billing and account management, product and marketing, network and platform engineering, data analysis and compliance, and people interested in how to explain technical problems clearly to customers will find plenty of scope.
We have not researched entry routes. As a BT Group brand, the practical step is to check the BT Group careers site for roles in Sheffield and Leeds and see which job families appear. Customer service roles often need strong communication and patience, while technical roles benefit from computing and networking knowledge, and both are good places to start learning how the internet reaches homes.
Website: www.plus.net
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