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Need a new isp after 12 years.

Greetings folks,

I've been with Zen Internet for 12 years now but I need to find another isp within the next couple of weeks. I originally got Zen ADSL but then last october I upgraded to their Fibre2 account which runs to just over £36pm.

Right now I find that this is a struggle for me and having contacted them in the hope they'd offer me a better deal I was told no. so my fibre 1 year contract is up in the next couple of weeks and I am seeking a new fibre isp.

I am rather a heavy user and need around 300-500gb per month. I'm looking at moving to Plusnet but I'm not 100% sure as the Zen billing guy on the phone was rather slating them.

If you can suggest a reliable fibre isp for around £20-£25pm that would be superb!

I have to say though, if you can afford Zen they are great, but I just wish they'd treat their old customers better ;)
 
Plusnet are OK(used them for 2 years with FTTC), they have helpful UK support which is a stand out feature for a mass market ISP. They also attract a lot of price sensitive broadband nerds - who moan quite a lot when a mass market ISP doesn't offer them the same service as a pricier ISP like Zen ... :rolleyes:

Any reason you aren't taking out line rental with your Zen fibre broadband? Do you definitely need 80/20 or could you cope with 40/10 unlimited?

Noticed Quidco are offering £160 cashback if you take BT Infinity 1(40/10) unlimited plus BT TV(free+£14 activation fee) and calls - BT will also give you a £80 Sainsburys voucher. BT are offering BT Infinity 1 unlimited at £12.50/month+£17.99 line rental.

Think the overall net cost(over 12 months) for the Quidco/BT Infinity 1+calls offer works out, after cashback and vouchers, to about £15/month. Obviously you'd be free to migrate away from BT once the 12 month contract was up and their prices revert to normal/higher rates. :)
 
Mind you PlusNet have been in the news quite a bit over the past few months for all the wrong reasons (price hikes, speed reductions, service faults etc.) and so that doesn't help their case, but underneath that they're usually ok. Still it's been a tricky 6 months for PlusNet, so it's hard to directly recommend them.

The other option on the affordability scale would be Sky Broadband, but if you have Fibre2 with Zen (£30 per month + £16.99 line rental) then you'll find that Sky's unlimited 76Mbps fibre package is almost the same price. In fact 76Mbps fibre packages across the whole market follow a similar price point and if you want to save money then you may need to go for the 38Mbps service.

At 38Mbps Sky's fibre unlimited service is currently just £10 per month for 12 months and £20 thereafter, with slightly cheaper line rental than Zen at £16.40 (but we expect Sky's line rental to go up in price by +£1 very soon). Obviously PlusNet's 76Mbps service has a standard price of £19.99, so it's a lot cheaper, but sometimes the less you pay the less you get.

If you can get Virgin Media then they can be worth a look too.
 
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I agree BT are mind-bogglingly bad at customer service, 15-20 minute waits on phone or chat as standard, expect to be "accidently" cut off in chat or on the phone, BT CEO Gavin Patterson should be taken out and shot - or worse made to use his own customer service ...:mad:

However, if you don't need customer service to solve problems BT Infinity can be a good deal financially. :hrmph:
 
I think TalkTalk is cheaper than BT and you get £100 love2shop voucher etc. BT i had issue accessing bbc iplayer and few other streaming sites. speed test will say full speed but when try to access HD video it will say I don't have bandwidth, soon as I use a VPN to another isp and this will work fine.

They might have fixed that by now this is good few years ago now.
 
Plusnet are OK(used them for 2 years with FTTC), they have helpful UK support which is a stand out feature for a mass market ISP. They also attract a lot of price sensitive broadband nerds - who moan quite a lot when a mass market ISP doesn't offer them the same service as a pricier ISP like Zen ... :rolleyes:

Any reason you aren't taking out line rental with your Zen fibre broadband? Do you definitely need 80/20 or could you cope with 40/10 unlimited?

Noticed Quidco are offering £160 cashback if you take BT Infinity 1(40/10) unlimited plus BT TV(free+£14 activation fee) and calls - BT will also give you a £80 Sainsburys voucher. BT are offering BT Infinity 1 unlimited at £12.50/month+£17.99 line rental.

Think the overall net cost(over 12 months) for the Quidco/BT Infinity 1+calls offer works out, after cashback and vouchers, to about £15/month. Obviously you'd be free to migrate away from BT once the 12 month contract was up and their prices revert to normal/higher rates. :)

Line rental I want to leave as-is. I don't want to hand it over to an isp, no real reason, just don't want to.

yes I could cope with 40/10 unlimited, that would be fine.
 
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I think TalkTalk is cheaper than BT and you get £100 love2shop voucher etc. BT i had issue accessing bbc iplayer and few other streaming sites. speed test will say full speed but when try to access HD video it will say I don't have bandwidth, soon as I use a VPN to another isp and this will work fine.

They might have fixed that by now this is good few years ago now.

I've heard very bad things about talktalk from a friend of mine who was on it. tbh he scared me off them for life. hehe

After looking around I believe my options are either to move to plusnet fibre or stick with Zen and downgrade my connection from fibre to ADSL. no cable here so Virgin is out. I guess I might see if Sky do a package for broadband only no phoneline and no tv.
 
talktalk fibre is actually all right my cousins r happy with them but as with any of this kind a cheap isp if things go wrong very hard to get it fixed. you can try sky too. downgrading to adsl is tricky as you have to remove the BT openreach install face plate etc (I think)
 
Line rental I want to leave as-is. I don't want to hand it over to an isp, no real reason, just don't want to.

yes I could cope with 40/10 unlimited, that would be fine.

Just to note, as far as 40/10 goes, Plusnet offer 40/2 (used to be 40/20) - the same as TalkTalk.
 
Plusnet are OK(used them for 2 years with FTTC), they have helpful UK support which is a stand out feature for a mass market ISP. They also attract a lot of price sensitive broadband nerds - who moan quite a lot when a mass market ISP doesn't offer them the same service as a pricier ISP like Zen ... :rolleyes:

Noticed Quidco are offering £160 cashback if you take BT Infinity 1(40/10) unlimited plus BT TV(free+£14 activation fee) and calls - BT will also give you a £80 Sainsburys voucher. BT are offering BT Infinity 1 unlimited at £12.50/month+£17.99 line rental.

They also do stupid offers like 12 months free and £50. As I call it, you get the moon on a stick and the stick thrown in for free. and THEN people complain.

I am with Zen (was with A&A as you can tell) but the usage caps were a problem. I do well well well above the 500GB this gent needs a month and have no problems. I LIKE the way they don't give silly offers out - everyone pays the same. That works and the quality shows.

As for plusnet, for me personally. If it was the last ISP on earth etc...
 
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I guess I might see if Sky do a package for broadband only no phoneline and no tv.

They do - it's called Fibre To The Premises - costs around £3000+ any extra build costs and £400 a month - but you get your own line and £3000 can be covered by a free connection voucher from BDUK

Apart from that - with the exception of Virgin Media - all providers needs a phone line in order to operate. AAISP do a copper pair which is a line with no calling facility and which won't take calls either. As it has no dial tone it has a looped message saying it's being monitored by them and not to disconnect. This is to stop an engineer from thinking the line is dead and disconnecting it

I have had that - it was £12 a month for the copper pair only.
 
It's actually 50Mbps to 70Mbps on the entry-level package, although at present that's only for existing subscribers so oddly you can sign-up to 50Mbps but then upgrade to 70Mbps on the same deal. No doubt eventually 70Mbps will become their standard.
 
Just gone from 50 to 70 makes a good back up line but it's still inferior in performance and quality to my FTTC line which is slightly more.
 
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