Home talk vs fibre line rental bundle

Ignoring the upcoming price changes for the moment, why exactly do Zen charge £4.76 more a month for a fibre bundled phone line compared to their home talk line rental? [£15.98 - £11.22]

If you have your line rental with someone else, Zen charge a premium on top of the fibre cost but it looks like they're already charging a premium on their own line rental...

Am I being stupid here?

Edited by deleted (Sun 16-Nov-14 11:48:33)

It is all tied into the pricing of an unlimited fibre based service, when there was usage limits the voice line rental was the same.

So really they are lying about the actual cost of the broadband

In reply to a post by ukwiz:

So really they are lying about the actual cost of the broadband

Is Zen's marketing of a product any different to say BT who has an unbeatable offer for a few months and then the price rises steeply thereafter? Then there is a certain airline where the fare is 50p but actually costs substantially more to fly with them with all those little extra fees added in.

You just have to do your homework to find the price you will pay, taking into account T&Cs, and then decide accordingly who you will go with. I would love to see honest pricing of products but I don't so it happening, ever.

ISTR A little while ago, someone from Zen did post in a thread about the reason/cost basis for this.

It's only my interpretation, but I believe Zen try to present their voice/FTTx bundles in a way that allows the pricing to be compared easily to BT Retail. The line rental cost appears under the headline broadband price, along with the one-off activation cost.

The voice line rental in a Zen bundle is of the same order as BT Retail line rental. The exact comparison depends on any line options - for example, Zen charge 90p/month for Caller Display, whereas you can often get Caller Display for free on a BT Retail residential line by signing up for 12 months of Privacy at Home with Caller Display.


Personally, I much prefer Zen's transparent pricing to BT Retail's "you can have this at a discount, but you recommit for 12 months, then the discount ends unless you make a further commitment" sort of pricing. I'm a long term Zen broadband customer, and recently moved both my lines to Zen (the line my FTTC service is delivered over and one other residential voice line). Zen don't have any of the "recommit for 12 months for a discount" nonsense and they have held their voice pricing for the remainder of the minimum period (12 months on the line with the FTTC, 1 month on the other line).

The only slightly disappointing thing was that moving my voice line to Zen started a new 12 month minimum period on the FTTC service, which was previously out of minimum contract period. I can understand Zen's reasoning: the voice and FTTC services are viewed as a bundle, also the FTTC service moved to a lower price on the same tariff to reflect the bundle discount. Nevertheless, I feel Zen's policy of starting a new minimum commitment on the FTTC service is a little harsh. As I have no intention of moving away from Zen and there is not really much they can do to improve an already unlimited tariff, it doesn't much bother me.


Since my connection moved to Zen backhaul network at the end of September, my Bandwidth Quality Monitor graphs have shown lower jitter and fewer latency spikes than on BT Wholesale backhaul. There was some initial instability whilst Zen presumably optimised the backhaul network (8 October was one of the worst days), though this has disappeared in the past three weeks as can be seen from my live BQM. Native IPv6 would be nice, but I know Zen have other priorities at present. I wouldn't be surprised if we see full LLU connections on exchanges where Zen have physical presence - I believe the Zen MSANs can take voice line cards.