Zen or PlusNet Broadband

[jimborae]

So my contract with Vodafone broadband is at an end....thank god and as they no longer discount employees broadband I'm off & ditching their crap service offering. So it looks like it's down to two providers as I only want a 12 month contract and I value reliability & customer service over value.

Zen & PlusNet seem to be the two main contenders but sadly Virgin Media are out as the wife wont let the drive be dug up and their customer service is appalling. So out of Zen & PlusNet who would folks go for.

[peterb]

I’m with Zen and it has been pretty much faultless - but expensive and I am considering moving to Plusnet. At the end of the day, both are provisioned by Openreach, so you are paying for customer service and support. Zen are good, but at a cost of more than double I can get Plusnet for. I do have a block of 8 static IP addresses (when they were available at no extra cost from Zen) but I can get a static IP address from Plusnet business, which is enough for my needs now.

[jimborae]

For me Zen is only £7/month more expensive, £38.99/month as opposed to £31.99/month for PlusNet. I have no need for for multiple static IP's though the one you get as standard with Zen maybe handy.

[DanceswithUnix]

I had the same choice, I went for Zen.

BT occasionally mess up, usually with the voice part of the deal and once when performance suddenly dropped due to line quality, but a quick call to Zen got it fixed again pretty sharpish.

The free Zyxcel router was garbage though, I should have stumped up for the upgraded one. Hopefully they don't offer that cheap botnet magnet model any more.

[jimborae]

I had the same choice, I went for Zen.

BT occasionally mess up, usually with the voice part of the deal and once when performance suddenly dropped due to line quality, but a quick call to Zen got it fixed again pretty sharpish.

The free Zyxcel router was garbage though, I should have stumped up for the upgraded one. Hopefully they don't offer that cheap botnet magnet model any more.

Fritz!box 7530 is apparently what you get now. But I would certainly be wanting to have the option of using my own gear like I currently do. I presume thats possible with Zen?

[spacein_vader]

Fritz!box 7530 is apparently what you get now. But I would certainly be wanting to have the option of using my own gear like I currently do. I presume thats possible with Zen?

Not just possible, almost encouraged as part of the sign-up process. I'm with zen and while the Fritzbox is ok if you have better kit I'd use it. Their support is good too.

Never used Plusnet but they're one of the few arms of BT that don't seem to have had their customer service function hollowed out.

Yet.

[DanceswithUnix]

Fritz!box 7530 is apparently what you get now. But I would certainly be wanting to have the option of using my own gear like I currently do. I presume thats possible with Zen?

Yes, they supplied an idiot sheet with the router for "how to plug in and use your new WiFi", but they also have help for setting up all sorts of routers. I initially went back to the old BT VDSL modem and Netgear router when the Zyxcel was playing up, now using a Draytek.

Zen were very helpful with the Zyxcel, but clearly it wasn't capable of the port forwarding setup I was used to using.

[jimborae]

yes currently use an old BT/Huawei Echolife modem & Asus router, so good to know that I could probably continue with that setup. Conversely I'm reading some worrying reports about a decline in Zen's customer service but I suppose that it those who have an issue shout the loudest and maybe that's what I'm seeing.

[Millennium]

I am on Voda VDSL 40/?? (10?) for about 2 weeks and a day now. I do like it - I was on ADSL before from plusnet and unfortunately as I passed the end of the contract period with them I paid more than I would have liked to as a residential customer (rather than a LTD or to float entity).


They have been strong and I've checked their peering arrangements and datacenters. They seem to be more focussed on USA and Europe (belgium?) than the UK infra perhaps suggesting they have that in hand. I pay £21.99 or £20.99 a month (probably the former) and the deal came with a £50 amazon voucher - pretty good value but not as cheap as the once available £12-14 ADSL 2+ packages.

The ping is nice and the supplied equipment is easy to set up and firmware updates automatically when plugged in. I called them to get the line activated on the day (my ADSL went down) and the lady I spoke to was completely awful. I don't expect to have to talk to them again though so there is that. It is a 12 month contract these days for some reason rather than an 18.

VDSL FTTC seems to be a viable option with occasional offers these days. I just hope I renew before the promotion period or similar. They have had 1 good person out of 3 that I have spoken to so far - I wanted their £20 ish 100gb SIM card yesterday and gave them a call. Ended up they said the promotion ended that day so I got a similar promotion online (might end up about £17 for 100gb a month +U+U).

A gent I spoke to at the local CW store told me he had tried EE and found that Voda had the best data rates in London (where I live). I don't plan on 5G anytime soon (in fact I am quite happy with 3G HSPA[+] which can give you 1mb/s up to about 2.5 mb/s (same as a good ADSL in the UK).

I just wanted in on the deal since Voda was charging more for like 12gb a month and my EE contract will be up in July so I can get a PAC and keep my number on my dual sim Redmi 6 (and an extra MicroSD slot! wowser ).

Back to the topic - I called Plusnet asking to stay and explaining I had missed the 12 month contract end date. They couldn't match the Voda VDSL offer (which I was actually ok with on the call but) still could Not make use of their systems to help me with my unexpected charges (I thought it was an 18 month contract as before). I had said here before I would switch to Zen - I checked the Voda UK net uplinks and they seemed fine for a home consumer (I don't use a lot of data for P2P or streaming). Zen makes sense for people who need their time more than I needed the cheaper VDSL offering of Vodafone (I retain respect for this company from the early days of 2G UK mobile networks). Also, the logo is very matter of fact.

test to Vispa in Manchester (who peer with Cogent @ Renaissance House Epsom ) :

[Spreadie]

Been with Plusnet (Force9) since 1997, when it started.

Twenty two years and nary a complaint. Of the handful of times I've had problems, most of those were down to line issues and not the ISP.

[b0redom]

I'm with Zen - faultless customer service but it costs a bit more. To be honest I'd prefer to pay the extra and support a company who's customer service function is in the UK.

They were also pretty good when I was trying to get a Draytek router working on my VDSL connection and having issues.

[Waveyw]

I currently use plusnet and have for a few years. No issues here. Was with BT before and was very inconsistent for speeds.

[CodeMonkey23]

Out of those 2 I'd go with Zen as I've had to deal with BTs customer service in the past. To say it was shocking is an understatement

[jimborae]

So just to update, I went with PlusNet in the end, it was installed 8 days ago so way to early to give any meaningful feedback but so far so good. The switch over was seemless and I was only without broadband for a couple of hours, speed is pretty much back to where it should be, around 57Mb/s and this is throughout the day with no slow down at peak times.

So colour me happy, of course 3 months down the line things may not be so rosy but if thats the case then I'll report back.

[Teece]

jimborae, I couldn't help but notice your Speedtest result - certainly not 57Mbps any more. Did you change PlusNet, or is that for another location?

[jimborae]

jimborae, I couldn't help but notice your Speedtest result - certainly not 57Mbps any more. Did you change PlusNet, or is that for another location?

Lol, no that's another location, namely work.

As for Plusnet well the speed has dropped to about 40Mb/sec unfortunately, however it's still rock solid whihc is more can be said for my previous Vodafone ISP speeds.