Do I Switch To Zen from Plusnet?

Hi, I've gone past my 18months with plusnet Fibre 76Mb, actually more like 24months and I'm thinking of changing to Zen or possibly another ISP but Zen is my top choice at the moment.

Plusnet's been ok with generally quick downloads but somehow as never really felt that fast. Streaming especially youtube seems to be an issue at times as it can just hang with nothing loading on videos. This seems to sometimes be kick started by turning off and on the wifi on my iMac but lately been finding it still takes a few page refreshes before the video will start loading and even then it's a bit slow and will often select a lower resolution indicating a slower connection speed. I've yet to figure out if it's a wifi or Plusnet issue but I have a high end Asus Wireless AC router so it shouldn't be a wifi issue.

Plusnet is cheaper but an18 month contract and and I just fancy a change hoping it'll fix some of these slow down issues. Is it worth the change to Zen?

If its contract length that bothers you, have you looked at Pulse8? 1 month fibre contracts. Generally seem to be good CS too.
I considered Zen too, but recent comments put me off a bit especially with 12 month contract if its not good enough. Seems they may be coming out the other side of the troubles now, but someone on here will probably let you know.
I ended up dropping fibre altogether to go with Uno on ADSL2+ in hope that the new unlimited TTB fibre won't be too long. I was nervous about dropping; especially with 2 teenagers, but so far stream multiple streams at once hasn't missed a beat. Downloading large files is where you will notice a difference or uploading, but streaming seems fine. Its a lot cheaper and 1 month contract.

Edited by deleted (Tue 21-Jun-16 12:35:02)

Cheers for the Advice. Im not too bothered about contract length I guess but it's nice to see that some providers are doing 12month contracts, handy if things do go downhill. Just looked at Pulse8 but the cost is higher than I'd like to pay.

Its same cost as zen no?

I seem to remember if you migrate an existing FTTC service to Zen you will just be on a 1Month contract as BT Openreach do a move not a cease and re-provide. (It's Openreach that force a 12month min contract on the IPS's) I am not sure if this has changed or now.

I like Zen, they are reliable i have been with them Since 2004 and not had any issues, I more recently moved house and got FTTC. I have not found any problems with it.
Some people have been reporting "Slow Single thread speed" Its not something I have noted though. Zen were being quite open about it issue for a while but seem to have gone zip lipped now.

The only long term issue I had over the years was a outage of a few days and that was because of a major BT outage.
Zen are a lot better when they have kit in your exchange if not they have to rely on BT backhall which they have very little influence over (this is the same for all ISP's) check on a site like https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

Hi

I switched from plusnet to Zen just under 11 months ago. I went from having a partner that moaned about iplayer buffering a lot to almost never complaining about the buffering at all. Viewing HD on iplayer was a no no with plusnet, only option was to download and watch or watch in SD, on Zen watching HD isn't a problem at all. I'm only 250 metres from the cabinet so sync pretty much at full speed or very close to it. Zen are slightly more expensive than plusnet so its worth it from an earache point of view. They also provide ipv6 which plusnet only have a trial running (for years it seems). I did have to sign up with a 12 month contract with Zen.

We're you on 76mb fibre for both? Interesting you had such a big change. I feel like some services should be a lot quicker than they are, it's never felt a huge change coming from Adsl2 to fibre even though the speed difference is massive, especially for streaming anyway.

Re telephone exchange I live in a small town so no zen equipment.

The responses here seem positive. I might just get them for the extra a month it's about £10 but I'll have to work out the phone extras.

Yes, same speed package on both isps.

I had Zen ADSL for several years before last November when I upgraded to 80-20 Zen VDSL.

Unfortunately this immediately showed that Zen customers who were routed via their London gateway were seriously short of downlink capacity which was identified by the poor single thread speeds. Zen would appear to have eventually increased their network capacity and I can now usually expect single thread downloads close to the multithread speeds.

http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/3MbBik/media/Zen%2...

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

So, after 6 months of Zen 80-20 VDSL, I have endured 3 months of wishing that I could terminate my contract early, whether I continue to stay with Zen or move to Andrews and Arnold in November remains to be seen!

Godfrey.

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

I seem to remember if you migrate an existing FTTC service to Zen you will just be on a 1Month contract as BT Openreach do a move not a cease and re-provide. (It's Openreach that force a 12month min contract on the IPS's) I am not sure if this has changed or now.

Yes BT OR ceased requiring ISP's to commit to a 12mth min term on FTTC like for like at same service address migrations where the End User has had an active FTTC service for the past 12mths or longer, that changed back in 2014 , they also reduced the connection fee to £11+ Vat
Sadly ISP's are under no obligation to pass on either positive change to their customers , The bigger ISP's aren't ever going to offer it that's for sure Nothing stopping someone brokering their own deal with an ISP though , you lose nothing by trying

Edited by tommy45 (Wed 22-Jun-16 03:13:04)