Be vs Zen

[b0redom]

Hi All,
I currently have Zen 8MB ADSL, but Be have recently enabled my exchange. Does anyone have any experience of both of these ISPs? How do they match up?

I've had very few problems at all with Zen, and when there has been a problem I've always been able to talk to someone who understands it and is able to resolve it pretty quickly (circular routing for example).

I'm looking to remove so I'll not be bound by the 50GB cap, and have faster upload rates (for RDP etc).

[Zak33]

Hi All,
I currently have Zen 8MB ADSL, but Be have recently enabled my exchange. Does anyone have any experience of both of these ISPs? How do they match up?

I've had very few problems at all with Zen, and when there has been a problem I've always been able to talk to someone who understands it and is able to resolve it pretty quickly (circular routing for example).

I'm looking to remove so I'll not be bound by the 50GB cap, and have faster upload rates (for RDP etc).

Reliable and Good Service. I'd be loathe to move.

[b0redom]

I presume you mean Zen?

[kopite]

Zen rock

I work for them and the service is top notch even if I do say so myself.

As long as nothing goes wrong every isp should be ok but when things go wrong you`ll be glad your with zen

[burble]

Zen are without doubt the best ISP I've dealt with. Had BT been capable of giving me a decent line (the voice portion frequently drops and so did the ADSL) I'd still be with them but I had to jump ship last year.

I've not personally used Be but I've got friends in London who do and comments range from "fantastic" to "crap" and just about all points inbetween.

[b0redom]

So any idea when Zen will start LLUing in W. London? :-)

[kopite]

Erm prolly a long while off lol

We do LLU in rochdale, oldham. bury and manchester atm.

One of the problems is that we need to have engineers going to customer sites when it goes wrong so The further away it is the harder it is to get to the sites.

I do the site visits and its lots of fun

[Zak33]

So any idea when Zen will start LLUing in W. London? :-)

if Zen saw it as safe, reliable and stable....they'd go that way in other areas, but the fact it concerns them for visits kinda implies it might be worth not going that route yet.

[b0redom]

So no one would recommend Be over Zen, even though the speeds are potentially much higher?

Interesting....

[Nemeliza]

Stability + Reliability + Customer Service = Zen
Stupid download speed = BE

What speed to you actually recieve from your 8mb zen service?

[b0redom]

Currently:

DownStream Connection Speed 7232 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 448 kbps

I'm not so bothered about massive downstream bandwidth, but I understand you can get an increase in upstream bandwidth?

That'd be really useful for when I need to connect to home from work.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I recomend be. they too ghave excellent customer support and is very reliable. its everything that zen is but faster!

[adam1701]

Bethere

mainly the increased speed that they offer!

1.3mb uploads are rather tempting!

[confusingcircle]

I've recently moved to Be (from Plusnet rather than Zen though) and can say nothing bad at all about them. The migration was smooth as silk, (being kept up to date by Be through SMS was a nice touch) and i'm getting download bandwidth of roughly 18.6mb and upload of 1.2mb. Service so far is just fantastic, if you want speed then Be are the way to go.

[Zak33]

nice to hear good things about them hopeful for the future then

[frazered]

I have tried both

was with zen for 2 years and now with Be - both pretty comparable in terms of service in my experience

Zen
- stability was very good
- 6meg download
- never had to call support, ever
- 34.99 for 6meg
- 1 month contract

Be
- 15meg download
- stability good as well, rock solid with interleaving on
- 1 meg upload
- had a small outage when i first joined but has been very good since, good service from the support team
- very active forums with great support network
- 24.99, 3month period then 1 months notice to leave
- unlimited usage apparently - i am pretty light user so not a problem for me


Both very positive for me, can't ignore the great speeds via the llu Be route so I am very happy with Be and would recommend them.

would i go back to zen, i would if they could do full llu at my exchange for the same price as Be or even for 34.99, but no reason to as Be have been very good so far, will see how the O2 thing pans out later this year or early next