Zen, Plusnet or TalkTalk (mainly for working from home)

I'm moving house in a few weeks and need to get a wired connection to use mainly for working from home.

I plan to use the connection for my work equipment and then load balance it to a 4G connection when out of office hours for the rest of the house.

I'm able to order whatever I want (well, <£40 or so) and Zen tell me I can get
38.51Mbps typical | 57.16Mbps maximum | 35Mbps min.

This means that I only really need to go for one of the lower packages as I very much doubt my connection would be reliable at the higher speeds.

I'm now coming to the problem of being able to go with plusnet or talktalk and getting £60/70 cashback OR just going with Zen and getting zero cashback.

Is Zen's service really that much better to miss out on the £60?

The actual line cost isn't an issue as I wont be paying it anyway.

If cost isn't an issue and your usage fits, AAISP is a better bet for home working.

I would recommend AAISP for line stability and speeds. I have been with them for a year now and my line hasn't missed a beat. They have also just reduced their price for high users.

Hi

I would recommend Uno, they do a product via TalkTalk wholesale with an assured rate of 40Mbits/sec (assuming of course you sync at that speed or above) otherwise your maximum assured rate is your sync speed. Their support is UK based, usually with an answer in minutes for any problems. I use them for working from home and never have any issues.

Regards

Phil

Post deleted by professor973

I've been with all mentioned here and am with Zen FTTC at the moment. It is the best service I've had for years. The lowest latency and doesn't miss a beat. A very good £140 Fritz!box router supplied for free which outweighs cashback in my book!
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Edited by professor973 (Thu 11-Jul-19 15:15:12)

In reply to a post by professor973:

I've been with all mentioned here and am with Zen FTTC at the moment. It is the best service I've had for years. The lowest latency and doesn't miss a beat. A very good £140 Fritz!box router supplied for free which outweighs cashback in my book!
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

I am on zen fftc 80/20 and here is my quality monitor.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...


I also recommend zen, good customer service for one and the connection is rock solid and responsive.

I get 55mbps down and 17-18mbps up and am happy with that.

Dan

My father just got a cash back deal from plusnet we had to chase it up for 2 and half months before they gave it to us lol

Used BT sky Virginmedia and TalkTalk all for home use and business use.

All of them worked fine for work VPN. I currently have sky�s fastest package.

I have had the 80/20 speed on all providers and ended up with speeds just below by like 1 or 2 Mbps that due to line length. Noise margin of 3db.

I have 25+ home devices also connected nowadays, and never have any issues with business usage even when others are 4K streaming. Everything I use is over WiFi, most things on 5GHz. I also have a AC wifi booster in the middle of the flat which works really well.

https://ibb.co/XJHSVwV

Current uptime with Sky. Not sure why you say getting a faster speed would be unstable? I have a 3db noise margin the lowest possible set by DLM.

I don�t see why you need to use 4G. I�d just get a standard 80/20 connection and see if there�s any need for anything else. I use my internet for Webex, Skype for business, one drive upload, some forensics stuff which can be 50gb files, outlook etc.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 20-Jul-19 23:52:29)

Have to work at home myself sometimes and Zen has been the best ISP I have used, ever, when I've had an issue it's been corrected promptly with no fuss.

I've not had good results trying to load balance to 4G as the latency climbs too high so the router can't tell the difference between the connection going down or just high latency.

Also the latency difference between VDSL and 4G makes balancing more tricky.

It works fine on a good day if the latency is good, but is awful on a bad day.

As for if Zen are better, I'd say probably, but it depends. I currently have Zen and Plusnet lines and they perform comparably. The problem I'd have with TalkTalk, is their residential service AFAIK doesn't support a static IP, their business broadband I believe is much better.

In reply to a post by epyon:

My father just got a cash back deal from plusnet we had to chase it up for 2 and half months before they gave it to us lol

That's unfortunate. I went though TopCashBack and had zero problems.

Its their "bonus" offers that tend to fail with no way to chase them up, and Very who often claim I used some other referer when I clearly did not.

In reply to a post by techguy:

Have to work at home myself sometimes and Zen has been the best ISP I have used, ever, when I've had an issue it's been corrected promptly with no fuss.

If you ever have problems, AAISP are beyond a doubt highly regarded as the best.

Zen are great if you don't have problems, but they don't have the same pull with Openreach if things do go wrong.

NOTE: I've never personally used AAISP as its too expensive for my usage pattern, but if I absolutely needed the best support, its where I'd go.

In reply to a post by alexatkin:

In reply to a post by techguy:

Have to work at home myself sometimes and Zen has been the best ISP I have used, ever, when I've had an issue it's been corrected promptly with no fuss.

If you ever have problems, AAISP are beyond a doubt highly regarded as the best.

Zen are great if you don't have problems, but they don't have the same pull with Openreach if things do go wrong.

NOTE: I've never personally used AAISP as its too expensive for my usage pattern, but if I absolutely needed the best support, its where I'd go.

Zen are great if you don't have problems, but they don't have the same pull with Openreach if things do go wrong.

I would agree with that, in fact they positively go out of their way to avoid sending out an engineer. Plenty of NOOB troubleshooting steps, reboot router, wait for several days etc. - when the problem is clearly outside the premises. At least that's my experience.

I was in no way suggesting Zen is bad (I'd rate them as the best affordable ISP), but AAISP are far above average - but you pay accordingly for that.

In reply to a post by alexatkin:

Zen are great if you don't have problems, but they don't have the same pull with Openreach if things do go wrong.

In theory that shouldn't happen.

In reply to a post by Taras:

In reply to a post by alexatkin:

Zen are great if you don't have problems, but they don't have the same pull with Openreach if things do go wrong.

In theory that shouldn't happen.

It's not pull that matters. It's push, which is a very different thing. It's the CP's willingness to push, push and push again.

Time after time over the last two or three years we've seen retail Zen customers getting nowhere when Openreach or BT Wholesale are being unreasonable and stubborn. Zen give up. AAISP don't, or at least they try harder for longer and usually get the desired result.

Zen's business customers I have the feeling are the ones getting the heavy duty support. Not the retail ones. From what I see, Plusnet customers get better help than them through their Community forums when they have a difficult problem.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 19-Aug-19 12:14:47)

I've been using Zen for over 15 years for both business and domestic.
At home, I've migrated with Zen from dial-up to ADSL, FTTC and FTTP through OR infrastructure with no problems at all. And the most recent upgrade to FTTP wasn't that easy to engineer
I've got no hesitation about recommending them..

That's not necessarily relevant, particularly if your FTTP is business and you've had no trouble with your home service. Also I did point out the doubt is relatively recent.

I've been on these forums for over thirteen years and was far more active in the past. Zen was always high on my list of recommendations, but was too expensive for most people. They have now moved their domestic pricing considerably downmarket and I think it is CS for that which has taken the hit.

The broadband service itself is not in question - hardly any ISP's is these days. It's the Customer Service and the effort they are prepared to put in over difficult issues on consumer level connections that I believe is questionable.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 19-Aug-19 15:13:06)

Have had Zen for nearly two years, totally satisfied. Speed is very consistent at about 70mbs. If you have a query they are easy to get hold of and very helpful. I'd recommend them to anyone.

+1