In reply to a post by smouty:

In reply to a post by alexatkin:

You're clearly not a gamer, there's a massive difference between 500 and 900 as it means installing games nearly twice as quickly.

How often do you actually do this though? The cost/benefit here is very small for most people but if it is your main hobby then I guess you are able to justify that.

If its new games probably often, modern practice is games as a service model, which means frequent updates to download. One game in my library has on average two 40+ gig patches a week.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I wouldnt ditch a for life £50 for only for contract £45.

An average rise of 5% a year would have the £44 catch up within 3 years. (Very almost at 2 years).

Picking this up late but while you're correct that the third year (which a consumer wouldn't be in contract for) would cost £48.51/month if there was a 5% rise at the end of each 12-month period, over that time period you will also have spent £135.48 additional on the "price for life" contract over the cheaper contract that increases each year (£72 difference in year one, £45.60 in year two, £17.88 in year three), which would need to be factored in.

I can't make a £5 premium for a "no price rises" contract make financial sense - if year 1 is £45/month then that's a year 1 total of £540, year 2 even with an unheard of 20% increase is £54/month for a year 2 total of £648 and a two year total of £1188. Paying £50 for 24 months is £1200.

I have yet to find game whose download server will go anywhere near saturating a connection. Most are waaaay below that.

To me the fast connection allows me to do various things concurrently. Rarely does any one "task" do very much more than use a small segment of the bandwidth.

Others experience may differ of course.

Steam, should easily saturate a gigabit connection, if it doesnt then either equipment or ISP issues in my opinion.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I can't make a £5 premium for a "no price rises" contract make financial sense - if year 1 is £45/month then that's a year 1 total of £540, year 2 even with an unheard of 20% increase is £54/month for a year 2 total of £648 and a two year total of £1188. Paying £50 for 24 months is £1200.

Yes: but after the 2 years are up you are then on a flexible rolling arrangement where you're not forced to recontract for another 2 years to avoid the out-of-contract price hike.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I wouldnt ditch a for life £50 for only for contract £45.

An average rise of 5% a year would have the £44 catch up within 3 years. (Very almost at 2 years).

I must confess that the presence of the Price For Life can create a dilemma if the service provided by each of the alternative ISP's is equally good.

The problem is that you cannot properly tell if the service provided is equally good or possibly even better until after you jump ship and you join the other ISP.

My own Zen Price for Life Guarantee is just over £50 per month and just a couple of weeks ago the BT price for 900 mbps was just under £45 per month plus the benefit of added incentives from BT such as one years Xbox Game Pass etc. so I did consider changing to BT and I may have made an error in not doing so.

At the time my 900mbps Zen line seemed OK but the Zen performance is cyclical. - I am not totally motivated by price alone but we all like to save a few Bob. - Good performance is the key.

As others have calculated the BT Deal would have cost less for at least 2 years and would probably cost more after 3 years dependent on new deal availability.

If the BT Performance was consistently better, even if the price was not lower, it would be silly to stay with Zen for a Price For Life but the issue is of consistently good performance.

18 months ago, when the Zen performance was dire, I would have jumped ship to BT without hesitation but these days for the most part the Zen Speeds Tests have been OK but I am not I am not sure that the way in which web pages are resolved is good.

Every so often my finger does still hover over the transfer to BT button when the Zen performance has a blip.

If anyone has left Zen for BT kindly let us know how things compare between them with regard to speed of connection and the speed in which web pages are resolved.

Regards,
Fido

I'll have to try them as an experiment.

My xbox will frequently download a game at ~850mbps.

Edited by zebb_edi (Fri 21-Apr-23 08:21:09)

On price guarantee at 48pcm for 900 package. Can't wait to end the contract in 11 months time. Netomnia have installed in our street. 1gb symmetrical for £29 pcm with no price rise during the contract. Zen/openreach just can't compete with this....