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)

It sounds most likely to be something local to be honest - probably worth setting up some network monitoring to see where the issue really lies; as paying more to discover it was your network all along would be a disappointment.

ta,
Phil.

I've made the switch to Zen, Im getting changed over the 12th of the July. Since were ditching Sky at Home to Save my a healthy chunk of cash each month for my folks, a more solid connection will be better with the use of online Video services increasing.

I spoke to Zen on the phone and they seemed very nice, Told me that the issues I'm having may be down to contention. I'll see if things are improved when I've changed over and keep things update here.

Today is my activation Date and I have a question. My connection is still live on plusnet Fibre. Do I have to change any settings to switch it over to Zen or will the plusnet connection just cut out? It said in a plusnet email that my service on plusnet was live till the 13th. Does that mean that it'll overlap my Zen connection today?

In reply to a post by maximono:

Today is my activation Date and I have a question. My connection is still live on plusnet Fibre. Do I have to change any settings to switch it over to Zen or will the plusnet connection just cut out? It said in a plusnet email that my service on plusnet was live till the 13th. Does that mean that it'll overlap my Zen connection today?

Once the the service migrates, you will loose internet connectivity but modem will remain in sync (same product/speed) then you will have to enter the new log in details user name & password , and different DNS server details if set to manually acquire (if set to plusnets) them to access the internet again

Edited by tommy45 (Wed 13-Jul-16 01:24:03)

In reply to a post by 3MbBik:

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.

[censored] hell, a near perfect connection that others would give their left hand for and still you are not satisfied with what you have, You just don't know how lucky you are.

Not always - The router sometimes magically hangs onto the old supplier after the switch. happened to me several times. Power cycle the router to hook up to new supplier.

I would certainly agree that I an lucky that the VDSL download loss between the local cabinet and my modem is 11.3dB. When I was initially connected to VDSL I was one of the first on Tavistock cabinet 10 and the download signal to noise was 14.1dB, luckily for me the additional customers that have since been added have only reduced the download signal to noise ratio to a fairly stable 7.2dB. Thus I have a very good connection to my local cabinet and when there is no congestion I can expect to achieve a high and stable VDSL download.
Alas, as the Zen capacity deteriorated between January and April it became very obvious to 80-20 customers with low loss connections to their local VDSL cabinets that they were unfortunately experiencing vastly reduced download speeds during both the working day and the evening, particularly single thread downloads. This degradation was only addressed when Zen added additional capacity to their London hub.
When the problem was at its peak we were often limited to single thread download speeds below 5Mbps for extended periods throughout the working day and evening. At all times downloads between midnight and 07:00hrs remained at full speed.


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

The prolonged period of reduced capacity is clearly illustrated by this graph.

[IMG]

So, when Zen were confronted with complaints about the capacity of their London hub back in January it took them four months to address the issue.

At present they have enough capacity for customers routed through their London hub not to have reduced speed single thread downloads, but those of us that had to put up with this problem for four months might not agree with your analysis that their service has been "near perfect" even though their connection to the FTTC might well have remained "near perfect" over the entire period.

This is what my VDSL service can achieve on a day that Zen are capable of maintaining the required London hub capacity,

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

Godfrey.

In reply to a post by professor973:

Not always - The router sometimes magically hangs onto the old supplier after the switch. happened to me several times. Power cycle the router to hook up to new supplier.

depends on whether the old supplier removes your user login credentials from their side or not, when i migrated from plusnet to zen the plusnet connection dropped pppoe session and wouldn't log in after that, but the zen connection was active, so a change of log in details and all was good

Got Zen working No problem, actually switched just after midnight so start of the 13th. Just had to login with Zen login details.

Im finding Zen feels faster. Might not be a great difference but it feels noticeable. The slight lag or hanging before some things loaded has gone and Im no longer finding youtube will not load at odd times.

Tested a download and it feels quicker than plusnet too though I had no real problem with downloads it just seems to stick to a higher consistent speed. So far pretty happy. Probably not worth £10 a month extra for most people but I feel like it's a much more consistent connection now.

Be nice to see a follow up in a few months time (with speedtests) and whether things continue as they are now. Currently, I cannot complain about Plusnet's performance but if I was to be paying another £120 a year for a service I would expect top notch all the way.

Edited by 69bertie (Thu 14-Jul-16 19:23:21)

In reply to a post by maximono:

Got Zen working No problem, actually switched just after midnight so start of the 13th. Just had to login with Zen login details.

Im finding Zen feels faster. Might not be a great difference but it feels noticeable. The slight lag or hanging before some things loaded has gone and Im no longer finding youtube will not load at odd times.

Tested a download and it feels quicker than plusnet too though I had no real problem with downloads it just seems to stick to a higher consistent speed. So far pretty happy. Probably not worth £10 a month extra for most people but I feel like it's a much more consistent connection now.

Without a doubt zen is better than PN on quite a few things web page loading times are quicker on some web sites , lower latency to some locations in particular gaming servers in places like Canada, but jitter levels are lower a lot lower on Zen (unless there is some issue with their network or with BT WMBC contention levels on the svlan) oh and they nearly always answer the phone quickly and are generally fairly knowledgeable overall , they also got BT capacity issues dealt with within a few weeks from first reporting it , unlike a certain other cheaper provider

Edited by tommy45 (Thu 14-Jul-16 22:44:22)

Think I'll be joining you. just given PN notice due to price rises