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ISP recommendation for deaf family (multiple Zoom / FaceTime) - Zen or Virgin?

RedTomato

Casual Member
Hi all at ISP Review,

I'm supporting a deaf family moving to a new ISP. We're heavy users of Facetime / Zoom. Often 4 Zoom calls at the same time (parents working from home & kids getting schooling via Zoom) plus simultaneous side-channel FaceTime calls to online BSL interpreters for the Zoom calls, meaning sometimes 4-6 video calls going on simultaneously.

Current ISP is Vodafone SuperFast Fibre 76, now at end of contract.

Have rarely if ever seen that 76mb. Sometimes as low as 3 or 4mb up especially at peak times, but still strangely still 15mb+ up. ( Had to resort to using 4G cellular for Zoom, not ideal.) Vodafone connection began dropping every 30 mins, Vodaphone / OpenReach came out and replaced the drop wire (from telephone pole to our house) last month. Connection and speeds rather more stable now, but still not ideal. Facetime calls / Zoom still stuttering / dropping from time to time, & connection still drops from time to time, especially under heavy load.

I have narrowed the choice of new ISP to:

- Zen - 50mb down / 12 up for £35 / month,
- Virgin Media cable - 200mb down / 20 up (plus some other extras) for £34 /month.

(Was with Virgin before Vodafone, and they had their issues, so this is not as good an offer as it might seem. FTTP, Hyperoptic etc not available)

I know little about this area, but seems this will depend on consistency and latency / jitter / stability in working hours and evenings.Could I ask you guys what your ISP recommendation would be for best quality / smoothest video calls?

I'm happy to spend a bit extra on a third party modem or router if it will help. I've just bought (but not yet set up) Amazon Eero wifi (highly recommended on Ars Technica) to take care of the wifi side of things.

Postcode is HA9 (NW London) and local exchange is Wembley LWNWEM https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LWNWEM

Thanks -RT
 
Page 2 of this may help.


However it's very difficult to choose an ISP based on a broad metric like "smoothest video calls", since connection quality can vary from location to location.

Now if we assume that Vodafone, which has indeed had plenty of capacity issues, was the main cause of your issues then swapping to Zen might solve that. But if there's still an underlying issue (fault) on the line or with your internal wiring then any improvement may only be marginal, in which case Virgin Media might be a better bet. At the end of the day it's a balance of risk.
 
Thanks Mark. Yes I've read page 2 of your excellent guide, and that's how I settled on Zen, if we were not to go with Virgin Media.

Internal wiring - router (with wifi switched off) is plugged in the master jack, which has no other phone extensions wired in, (and no landline phone plugged in) then via ethernet to the gigabit switch -> wifi WAPs / other wired stuff, inc a wired desktop which I use for speedtests / logging etc. Should be OK.

There might be an underlying fault with the external wiring / line, I don't know how to check on that.
 
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A look at the VDSL line statistics (e.g. SNR noise margin, attenuation etc.) might help to spot a fault.
 
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