Zen or AAISP or another?

My first post

I've just found out that I can get FTTC (the 40/10 max one, not the uber fast one) on my recently enabled exchange. Seems hard to believe as I'm in the middle of nowhere and have had 4/0.3 speeds for the last 3 years!

Anyway, I work from home so I need a decent, stable connection with good 24/7 support along with:
- 1 static IP
- no port blocking / throttling / traffic shaping
- good amount of data transfer (we use VOIP for phones so do not need any call package on the PSTN and transfer massive files over Dropbox)

My price point was up to £50 per month, including line rental.

Two that have jumped out are Zen and AAISP. They seemed pretty similar, apart from the fact that AAISP is capped at 100GB transfer on the Home::1 package.

My main reason for posting this was that originally I was 100% going to go for Zen, until I read some reviews on the ISPreview.co.uk website, so I wanted to ask people for their opinion on the two, or if there was another provider that I might have missed?

Why can you only get 40/10? Is it simply because of your distance from the cabinet? All FTTC cabinets are 80Mbps-enabled. What estimates does this checker give?

Which exchange is it please?

If you have an LLU-phone on Sky or TalkTalk you may need to use the Address option. Do not use the Postcode option.

Have you ruled out Plusnet? Their 40Mbps FTTC is 40/20, so if the upstream estimate is above 10Mbps they may be worth considering. Static IP address is a one-off £5 which you can set up through your Member Centre (Control Panel) immediately after first connection, and takes effect when you disconnect and reconnect.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 21-Feb-15 11:54:28)

Thanks for reply. The exchange is Elsworth.

I'm told it is the distance to the cabinet that is causing the speed cap.

The information from your checker gave me:
FTTC Range A (Clean) 36.3 27.4 7.5 5.7 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 29.1 15 7.2 3.4 -- Available

I was actually going to go with Plusnet originally but to be honest I'd read some bad things about their customer service recently, and as I've had a few issues with ADSL in the past 6 months customer support is a bit of a priority. I also read somewhere that they use traffic shaping? Would be interesting to know what you think about their service.

The traffic management isn't the traditional kind that imposed speed cuts at various times. I've only heard of a couple of people who seem to get some strange effect from it - the rest who were in doubt like you and those of us around when the earlier traditional version was dropped don't notice it and often say so.

The CS problem has been a slow response on the phone and to tickets. That problem seems to be decreasing, as we were promised it would now that the second call centre and newly recruited staff are getting up to speed. The reps on the in-house forms are very good, and visit these forums as well though not posting nearly every day as they used to.

For my first FTTC when I left O2 LLU I chose IDNet, that have a similar reputation to Zen but are smaller. After my first 12 months I moved to Plusnet as IDNet were very expensive and I couldn't see what I gained from paying more. Since when I have upgraded twice, the second time being eleven months into my 18-month term and meaning I had to restart the eighteen months. That didn't bother me in the least.

I had big trouble for years on ADSL2+ due to intermittent huge noise on the line. That's a different story but was a major factor in going for FTTC. I believed the problem was the cables from the cabinet to the exchange, which of course FTTC bypasses. Fortunately I was right - but choosing IDNet was party caused by the worry that I might need good CS if I'd been wrong. At the time Plusnet did not have FTTC.

Re your own connection, from the posts on here I'm not sure the Zen CS for non-business customers is quite as caring as it might be, but it's not something I could easily substantiate. Suffice to say I don't think I would go there myself. On the other hand at one time I would never have looked at Plusnet - but things with them have changed dramatically since those days.

I think you should look at AAISP and Plusnet, but on your Market 1 exchange you will probably find Plusnet prices £7.50pm higher than the headline prices.

Another alternative is xilo. A large number of ex-ADSL24 customers fed up since COMS took them over have joined them, as have some ex-O2/Be deserters from Sky. The CS has a magical reputation and the broadband service seemingly fine.

I really appreciate your response and your opinion. Thank you for taking the time to reply!

I forgot to say, (my laptop is playing up these days and I completely lost the first draft), the fact that Plusnet upstream is "up to 20Mbps" is almost certainly not relevant given your estimates.

I do also have a niggling concern about the way they may be going since a chap from BT became the CEO last year some time. I'm not in any way thinking of leaving though. Obviously I wouldn't suggest them if I were.

I've been with both ISPs (was with AAISP, now with Zen, as you can see from my sig). Reason I moved from AAISP was due to usage. I was on their unit based tariff, and working from home, specifically during the day during peak time (9am-6pm, Mon-Fri) could get a bit pricey. I also had to artificially cap the speed of my connection during these times to ensure no nasty surprises occur (some device deciding it was going to download a 1Gb update during the day, for example).

Both ISPs are good, but I moved back to Zen due to usage limits with AAISP. Even the Home::1 package with them would not have helped me.

I am curious of the review you read about Zen, making you think otherwise. Both ISPs, in my opinion, are top notch. Had no issues with either at all.

If you do not want to worry about usage, I would go with Zen. Static IP out the box (or even a /29 if you want) and, unlike AAISP (if you also take the line rental), you will be able to make outbound calls on your landline (not possible on landline provisioned by AAISP). Zen also offer some bolt-on voice options for anytime minutes to 01, 02, 03, 0845 and 0870 numbers (they were offering unlimited anytime minutes, but I can only seem to find 5000 anytime minutes on their site; weird, you might want to call sales about that if the anytime minutes add-on interests you).

If 40mbps is going to be the likely max sync that your line could support ,then you for stability reasons would be better off on the Openreach 40/10 product Plusnets 40/20 isnt the same as 40/10 but is acually the 80/20 with a cap on throughput done internally by Plusnet
In all fairness i would have a read of some of plusnets reviews they don't make for good reading either
Then there is contract lenghts to consider plusnet is 18mths for home and 24mths for buisness also the price of their buisness products for what would appear no extra in the way of support or service you IMO would be better off else where

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 21-Feb-15 16:46:50)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

For my first FTTC when I left O2 LLU I chose IDNet, that have a similar reputation to Zen but are smaller. After my first 12 months I moved to Plusnet as IDNet were very expensive.......

Compared to PlusNet perhaps they are expensive, but their prices are pretty much the same as Zen's. Or were the last time I looked. You pays your money etc

I notice the OP is using VOIP. Don't know what, if anything you're paying for VOIP, but had you thought of buying the whole lot, VOIP included, from one supplier? Again it depends on usage, but Zen do 1000mins for something like £5.50/month so combining the packages might make it more attractive. Timico, who only do B2B are pretty hot on VOIP, but I'm guessing they are expensive for a complete package.

I partially agree with Roberto in that given the better reliability of FTTC, service backup is possibly not worth the premium it once had. Nonetheless, if you're working from home and depend on your BB/Phone connection, then I would think reliability and service are worth *some* premium. But that's just me. YMMV of course.

HI Depending on where you are in Elsworth you may well be a little way from the cabinet which is why the speeds are slower. If you are in the Broad End area / Cotterells Lane and even some bits of Brook street I can imagine that.

Having Lived in the village for 10 years I know the fun of broadband there. If you want to drop me a PM here feel free - we are also locally based if we can help in any way.

In reply to a post by mixt:

If you do not want to worry about usage, I would go with Zen. Static IP out the box (or even a /29 if you want) and, unlike AAISP (if you also take the line rental), you will be able to make outbound calls on your landline (not possible on landline provisioned by AAISP). Zen also offer some bolt-on voice options for anytime minutes to 01, 02, 03, 0845 and 0870 numbers (they were offering unlimited anytime minutes, but I can only seem to find 5000 anytime minutes on their site; weird, you might want to call sales about that if the anytime minutes add-on interests you).

Zen do not offer dynamic IP at all. By default, Zen accounts default to having one static IP address.


In these post IPv4 depletion days, I believe Zen have removed the option where you can opt for a /29 as part of the ordering process instead of a single IP address. I believe it remains free of charge for those that can justify it, though you have to request it specifically. I suspect a lot of people requested a /29 in the days when it was a free option and never used more than one WAN IP address.

My Zen FTTC connection has a /28 that was allocated several years ago - even then that required a RIPE form and payment of a one-off administration charge.


The FAQ links on the new Zen web site are a bit screwy - the home user pages take you the business FAQ. The home user call package on an FTTC plus line rental bundle is unlimited, as the proper FAQ explains.


I'd recommend Zen. The only major drawback is that there is no prospect of IPv6 in the near future, though you can always get an v6 in v4 tunnel from SixXS or Hurricane Electric.

Great comments, thanks for everyone's input.

In answer to some of your questions, I've actually recently started a VOIP company with my own server and SIP trunk so I will route all my calls through that. I won't be making any calls through the PSTN, only through VOIP.

RE: Plusnet, I'm a bit torn with this one. I quite like the idea of being with a smaller ISP and as the contract length is quite long I'm less inclined to consider them, even at a lower price point.

I will look at Xilo too thanks for the suggestion.

Certainly with Zen, the unlimited data is a big draw as I do not really want to be thinking about counting the GB's each month, and I like the idea of knowing exactly where I am cost wise.

The reviews about Zen that were making me wobble were on ISP Review.co.uk - there are a couple of recent ones (Feb 2015) and one from last September where people really aren't happy, but hey you'll get that I suppose. Zen have won awards recently for service and customer support so hopefully they are just blips. Certainly I've read some awesome reviews from last year about them too such as this one.

Ultimately I got quite a good feeling talking with both AAISP and Zen last week; I think either would be a good choice so maybe I'll flip a coin when my MAC code arrives

The three negative Zen reviews you mention involve:

* a simultaneous provide attempt going wrong followed by an unsuccessful attempt to get what the customer wanted manually. Simultaneous provide can throw up problems, the reasons for which are usually in Openreach's court to some extent.

* a refusal to take reasonable troubleshooting steps (probably BT Wholesale steps rather than Openreach - Zen use their own backhaul when available and BT Wholesale otherwise) because the connection was mission critical and the customer had no backup. I'd term this situation a customer error - if it's that important you should always have a backup even if that's a Mobile Broadband dongle plugged into the router

* an alleged billing error in somewhat unclear circumstances. The customer would have to pay some line rental in advance at the higher FTTx bundle rate, though we have no access to the account so no way of knowing whether this was charged correctly. The loss of service on migration from TalkTalk MPF may well have been Openreach's fault, but we have no way of knowing.


Obviously in an ideal world none of these customers would have had problems, The reality is that this sort of thing is, to some extent, common to any ISP using Openreach products. At least with Zen you get through to someone in Rochdale if you have problems, not someone in an overseas call centre.

I'm happy with my Zen connection, which has been mostly trouble free. The two technical problems I've had in two years of Zen FTTC were a BT Wholesale area wide fault and a Zen fibre cut compounded by the failure of Zen's router to switch traffic to the (fully functional) spare. Neither problem lasted for that long. Overall, the connection performs very well for a consumer grade product.

Thanks for the reply, good to hear a Zen customer's thoughts on those comments.

If it's cheap & quality, i would go with the post office or one of the other providers offering cheap line rental deals for the phone only, and Zen for the BB the upto 40mbps 40/10 unlimited product @£27.00 per month you could probably get both for around £40 per month,

Post office line rental only with line rental saver =£12.00 per month
or direct save direct save £11.00 pm line rental
So £11 line rental, Zen fibre 1 40/10 @£27.00 + the surcharge for not having zens line rental(which is wrong imo) £4.40+ vat =£43.40 per month so under your £50 budget

Edited by tommy45 (Sun 22-Feb-15 17:24:26)

As someone that has used a variety of ISPs Zen gets my vote as if things do go wrong they get Openreach to sort things quickly and actually listen to and take account of what you are telling them in addition to what they are observing on their monitoring.

I would recommend getting your line rental from them too as if they manage both the voice and broadband side you don't have to go in between two suppliers in the case of a problem.

In reply to a post by David_W:

In these post IPv4 depletion days, I believe Zen have removed the option where you can opt for a /29 as part of the ordering process instead of a single IP address. I believe it remains free of charge for those that can justify it, though you have to request it specifically. I suspect a lot of people requested a /29 in the days when it was a free option and never used more than one WAN IP address.

I called them up a couple of weeks ago, well past my 30 day initial period for ordering 8 IPs free of charge. Spoke to a young lady who put through a completely FREE order to switch me to a /29 allocation, no questions asked. I think it is the case that anything beyond /29 they require justification for the usage, like you have said (having to fill in forms etc). Actually, AAISP did that off the bat when I ordered with them. Anything more than a single static IP and I had to justify it. So I didn't bother, and just had one IP address with them.

I do find Zen's automated emails detailing that I have 5 usable addresses on a /29 a bit outdated to be honest. That may have been the case a decade ago, but things have moved on. It's possible to use ALL 8 IP addresses they assign you if you are clever with your routing or use NAT.

And yes, their website appears fragmented - wish they would sort it out. And yes, shame about IPv6 - maybe one day they'll get around to offering it to end users.