Worth paying extra?

I am currently paying £22.50 pm to Plusnet for the unlimited fibre package. The connection is a bit unstable and it's hard to get through to customer service. So I'm thinking of switching. Is it worth paying the extra to take Zen's unlimited fibre package (£30 pm)? In what ways are Zen better than Plusnet? (And is it really unlimited - without throttling?) Thanks.

I am only on their LLU so I can't yet say for sure but if you look at this thread. http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/which_isp/t/4414259... there are some rather good replies about Zen.

As soon as I can get FTTC I will be upgrading. Their ADSL is rather good so I can only imagine the FTTC kicks ass.

No throttling or censorship on either.

It's only £30 a month if you take their line rental. It's £35.40 without.

They do not do any traffic shaping on their network. There are no traffic limits of any kind, other than the speed of your line.

Can't say I've ever tried to call support, but they regularly win awards for it.

Yes is the simple answer. I have Zen Fibre2 and it is awesome 24/7/365.

Yes it is worth it..

In reply to a post by greenwich:

The connection is a bit unstable

Chances are all you would be doing is moving your fault from one company to another.

Have you raised the issue with Plusnet at all?

In reply to a post by azrael316:

Have you raised the issue with Plusnet at all?

We all have and are.... not that they give a [censored] "it seems!"

I dare restart my router or modem these days... I did last week and still unable to keep my connection stable since.... note connection being the one beyond my exchange and not in my home.

Yes. I raised a ticket online (call centre waiting times are horrendous). They advised me to change wifi channels, which I have tried. Thanks to some advice I got on the Plusnet part of this site, I have improved things by no longer using Plusnet's DNS servers and using Google's instead. That has eliminated a problem I had with sites loading only after long delays. But the connection does still drop more often than it used to in the days before I switched to Plusnet, even though the router and I are still the same distance apart. So I'm thinking maybe either buy a better router than the one Plusnet gave me for free, or just switch suppliers.

I already get my phone service from Zen. I've also had a web site hosted by them in the past and I was happy with their customer service.

Ah, so its a WiFi issue then.

THe router PN supply is pretty awful with the WiFI, I assume its the TG582n you have.

See if they will send you the newer one they have started shipping instead.

It's more likely a firmware issue - don't PN have their own firmware on their 582's now?

I have a 582 I bought from A&A and it's more reliable than my SH2 for wifi. That said it does say 582 Pro on the bottom - not sure if that makes a difference but it's standard Technicolor firmware on it. And it's working fine on Zen.

Good suggestion. I might go back to Plusnet and see if they are willing to help.

The installation into my house was bungled to start with. The BT engineer had to come back and redo the wiring after the first fibre modem installation because I was getting nowhere near 76Mbps even with wires. With wires I always get 76Mbps now but less than half that with wifi, even though it's a small house.

In reply to a post by greenwich:

Good suggestion. I might go back to Plusnet and see if they are willing to help.

ask mlmclaren about Plusnet's willingness to help. I think you might find that may be a bad move. He's had problems with his line/service for months and Plusnet, from what I am told, Has all but given up on him.

Edited by deleted (Thu 18-Jun-15 11:09:37)

Given up seems to be an understatement...

My messages to staff are being ignored, as well as any tickets I had open...

Can't get through to their customer services... and to top that off, their Ombudsman CISAS replied to my email with a generic recap of what they do and cans and can't and told me to go to their website to process a complaint also says call one of their advisors on the same number Plusnet has listed for them....

All I got was some automated machine asked a few questions about my complaint and then asks me to leave a message and cut me off....

Anyone on here got Zen's FTTC on an exchange with Zen LLU....

I'm looking to get away from BT Wholesale BRAS links.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Anyone on here got Zen's FTTC on an exchange with Zen LLU....

I have Zen FTTC and was moved from BT Wholesale WBMC to Zen's backhaul in October last year. Why do you ask?

If you look at the difference between Zen's LLU backhaul you are on David_W and my BT craphaul service [in my sig below for both lines] I would gladly jump at the chance of being on Zen's own backhaul infrastructure.
Pity it would cost them too much to fit out my exchange

In reply to a post by derekdel:

If you look at the difference between Zen's LLU backhaul you are on David_W and my BT craphaul service [in my sig below for both lines] I would gladly jump at the chance of being on Zen's own backhaul infrastructure.
Pity it would cost them too much to fit out my exchange

I understand why people would rather be on the Zen network. I simply didn't understand what I could do for mlmclaren or anyone else by being on the Zen network.


I was surprised when I was moved across to the Zen network. We're on a relatively small exchange that is not one of the original 200, though I am not certain where the GEA handover node is (it's possible it is at one of the 200, though I think it unlikely). I noticed because my first hop latency changed, then, on checking in the portal I found my line had changed to "GEA FTTC" and there was a fulfilled order for "GEA Fibre migration".

The potential savings on BT Wholesale backhaul costs might give Zen justification to roll out their network to further exchanges and reduce their dependence on BT Wholesale.

Hi David, Yes my apologies kind of forgot to add a reason to that question, your probably the best person to ask this... did you notice any improvements to service when your where switched to Zen's backhaul? and do you find any issues at peaks times with Zen's backhaul? and finally what region of the UK are you based in.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Hi David, Yes my apologies kind of forgot to add a reason to that question, your probably the best person to ask this... did you notice any improvements to service when your where switched to Zen's backhaul? and do you find any issues at peaks times with Zen's backhaul? and finally what region of the UK are you based in.

At first, the quality of service was slightly worse over Zen backhaul, as there were brief periods of increased jitter. This seemed to be initial teething issues whilst the Zen network engineers tuned the network parameters. These issues disappeared after a few weeks and have not returned.

The big bonus came some time after I switched to Zen backhaul, as I moved from connecting to the Manchester gateways to connecting to the London gateways. This improved my latency to London based servers, as I'm 40 miles roughly north of London. I posted about that at the time.


I'm not seeing any visible contention on the Zen network at any time of day.


I'll PM you an accurate location.

Cheers for PM, I think it might be worth me moving over to Zen then when I'm ready... I want to get some more information first though as I failed to do that when joining Minusnet...

Trying to avoid local congestion at the exchange and as much of the remote congestion as possible in this next move and I feel Zen maybe the best way to go to do this as most home users will avoid paying for likes of Zen.

I looked at AAISP but they use TTB LLU and thats used by many other resellers as well as the many residential bandwidth suckers and the prices they quote makes one's eye spin... pecially when you keep adding on the usage.

The service itself IS great. Even if there is others using it as it's also (I think) SLA'd but yes prices make your eyes water.

3 months with them and they had nearly £205 from me.

I got out of the Early termination though - which saved me £70. Knowledge of the law especially in regards to not informing people of price changes helps..

Fibre is a bit of a different ball game though as I've discovered with my current provider...

They seem to provide ADSL fine but Fibre is a different story.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Fibre is a bit of a different ball game though as I've discovered with my current provider...

They seem to provide ADSL fine but Fibre is a different story.

+ everyone is on fibre and very few are on ADSL

When I first got FTTC, BT reckoned that the line would only support 10.7Mb/sec down, 1Mb/sec up for every line connected to the cabinet. Even the house it stood outside. They would not accept that this was clearly wrong.

Because of the low speed estimate, Zen would not provide FTTC service, so I had to go to a different ISP, who could only put me on a 40down, 2 up connection because of the BT speed estimate.

The line initially synced at 39.8 down, 7 up. After a few months, as the cabinet filled and crosstalk grew, it slowed to 33 down, 6.7 up.

Attempts to get OpenWoe to see sense only resulted in them telling the ISP that the speed would drop to 10.7 /1 and they should 'manage their client's expectations'.

The speed did not drop, of course.

After a year or so, the BT suddenly and silently estimate changed to 25 down/ 5 up and I finally managed to get switched to a 40down/10 up deal, so I was no longer restricted to 1.7 up.

But it was stuttery with high latency and random pauses. Lots of DNS issues.

Because the estimate was finally more than 12Mb/sec, I finally managed to switch to Zen. Same hardware, same sync, but a MUCH faster, smoother connection.

Over the past few months the actual down sync has risen a couple of Mb/sec and the upload just a little to 8Mb/sec. I've no idea why!

There was a huge difference as a result of switching to Zen. I have had a SamKnows monitoring box running on the connection and looking back over the graphs, I can see the dramatic improvement on the day of the switch to Zen.

[Later]
Here's a chart of the jitter I don't think it is too hard to work out when I switched to Zen!

Edited by hoopla (Sun 21-Jun-15 22:38:58)

In reply to a post by hoopla:

Over the past few months the actual down sync has risen a couple of Mb/sec and the upload just a little to 8Mb/sec. I've no idea why!

That's probably because G.INP has been enabled on the cabinet and you have compatible equipment

You may be correct, Sarah.

It's a Huawei cabinet and a Huawei modem.

My Guaranteed Speed from BT is 74mbps and my estimate it 79.98/20

I hope I can get these!