Price Rises as Full Fibre UK ISP Zzoomm Offers 6 Months Free

New customers of Zzoomm’s gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network – available in parts of Henley-on-Thames, Hereford, Sandhurst, Crowthorne, Crewe, Cannock, Thirsk, Easingwold and Northallerton – can now benefit from 6 months of free service. But contract terms and core prices have increased.

As above, broadband ISP Zzoomm has announced that they’re offering 6 months of free broadband to new customers of their service, which is good. But the catch is that they’ve also switched from 12 to 24-month minimum contract terms (i.e. you’ll be locked in for double the time) and raised some of their core package prices.

For example, the provider’s 150Mbps symmetric speed package has gone from £29 to £33 per month, while their 450Mbps service has gone from £39 to £44 and 900Mbps has jumped from £59 to £66 per month. The good news is that their top 2Gbps package has held steady at £99 per month. All packages include a router and free installation (sort of.. we’ll come back to that).

Chris Collinson, Zzoomm’s Chief Commercial Officer, said:

“By introducing 24 month contracts, we are able to give our customers even more value for money with the first 6 months of free broadband. This also means those who are still in contract but have wanted to switch to Zzoomm are now able to enjoy Full Fibre technology with unparalleled speeds and first class customer service – all at a competitive price.”

Somewhat bizarrely, Zzoomm’s press release compares the pricing of their 150Mbps FTTP packages to the pricing of slower 59-67Mbps FTTC packages on BT, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk. This is odd because all three of those ISPs also have their own FTTP plans at similar speeds and offer prices, although many of those do have more expensive out-of-contract prices and lack symmetric speeds.

One other thing to be mindful of, since it isn’t made clear on Zzoomm’s product pages unless you click to flip the product tiles, is that they promote “free setup & installation“, yet the press release for today’s announcement notes that “there are no installation costs, just a one off £20 activation fee.” Current advertising rules tend to require that ISPs put all their upfront fees into a single charge in order to avoid such confusion.