Zen or IDNet?

J.James

J.James

J.James

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173
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Here and there
Hey guys
So we've got City Fibre in our street now :) and I'm obviously looking forward to seeing the difference in speed as I go from 67mb to 900mb or beyond! I still remember being excited many years ago at the jump from ISDN 128k to 2mb BT Broadband!

I've shortlisted these two providers for various reasons, but had to ditch a few other simply because they weren't available, Vodafone strangely enough - although given the hate I've seen for them, it might be the best.

My main use will be uploading to my new travel blog You Tube Channel - it will just be a hobby, but I've tons of 4k footage I need to edit first.
Secondary use will be online gaming - it's been a while - think 'Quake 2 on Wireplay'.

I guess there won't be much in it? But IDNet are offering something called a 'Gamers Package' on their highest tiers. It adds £5+ to the cost of the similar none-gamer option. Do you think this this will an essential upgrade?
Zen on the other hand have simpler options, just 900 mb or 1800mb - not discounting them or anything :)

Thank you!
 
Similar question asked here and IDNet seems to get positive remarks.

iDNet ?

I was just wondering if anyone uses them, and what they're like? Currently using Zen, but I get tired of the way they just leave me on expired contracts paying one price when they have better deals available. They never inform me of the new deals. I know that iDNet use some Zen infrastructure...
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk
 
radderfire said:
I've been with Zen for years, and there service has been fine. Recently I had to call them and they answered the phone pretty quickly. So, I'd say Zen provide a reliable service and are easy to contact.
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I used to like Zen. Until they made a change without notifying me which made my connection worse. Then when I queried it they tried to shrug me off. Massive delays in the getting back to me, never again. Managed to get out of my contact in the end.
 
Only been with Aquiss for a couple of months but pleased with our choice. We had a small issue post installation which they stepped in to resolve straight away. You will have to buy your own router but that's a boon if you ask me, I bought the popular flint 2 which has been great.
 
If you care enough to choose a provider based on factors other than advertised price and speed, it’s not unreasonable to expect you to care enough to choose your own hardware to handle the connection. Martin (Aquiss) is great, but you’re buying Martin, and Martin can only scale so far. I have scepticism when it comes to Zen, they aren’t as good as they once were, the quality of staff and depth of knowledge is diminished, they seemingly don’t have a robust internal knowledge base and communication has certainly suffered in recent years to the point it feels like they keep choosing to shoot themselves in the foot. However, in a world where everyone is in a race to the bottom in terms of cost, will outsource anything and everything to the lowest bidder and service has been replaced with self service for the most part, perhaps I should allow them more leeway for still being significantly better than most.

I mean, it could be worse, I am still counting the months since my ISP reduced me to ADSL speeds, they're currently not even an option on CF for new customers, which hints at a no-sell stop despite how they frame it. Being on CF sometimes feels a little wild west for 2025.
 
J.James said:
Hey guys
So we've got City Fibre in our street now :) and I'm obviously looking forward to seeing the difference in speed as I go from 67mb to 900mb or beyond! I still remember being excited many years ago at the jump from ISDN 128k to 2mb BT Broadband!

I've shortlisted these two providers for various reasons, but had to ditch a few other simply because they weren't available, Vodafone strangely enough - although given the hate I've seen for them, it might be the best.

My main use will be uploading to my new travel blog You Tube Channel - it will just be a hobby, but I've tons of 4k footage I need to edit first.
Secondary use will be online gaming - it's been a while - think 'Quake 2 on Wireplay'.

I guess there won't be much in it? But IDNet are offering something called a 'Gamers Package' on their highest tiers. It adds £5+ to the cost of the similar none-gamer option. Do you think this this will an essential upgrade?
Zen on the other hand have simpler options, just 900 mb or 1800mb - not discounting them or anything :)

Thank you!
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I raised this point a while back.

I'm still with Zen.

The only advantage I could see with IDNet is that they offer (in my opinion) better routers than Zen. Not only that, but I have my own router and IDNet support it. They also focus on gaming, but I couldn't determine whether that lead to any benefit. Latency is a dark number to many supplies. Ask most suppliers and they will just look at you with a blank expression. As far as I know, the gamers packages just have gamer routers - in other words Asus. Asus gamer stuff is fine as long as you don't mind giving all your information to Trend. That may even include your emails.

Also, Zen offer ten free email addresses whereas IDNet offer none. I had decided to try IDNet but when I phoned Zen to end my service they gave me a substantial discount to stay with them.

Zen has slipped a bit and I think, as with many suppliers, they are very uninspired with their product. But, they are still very good as suppliers go.

I did look at Aquiss and while they are certainly a good company, their lesser packages are expensive compared to others.
 
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I look after someone on an IDNet business package on CityFibre and can't really fault them. The team answering the support tickets are excellent and most things are one email and whatever you're asking for is done. I think the latency is a little higher than it could be due to Zen backhaul quirks but the service is stable (the CityFibre National Access issues that hit the area this business is located in were completely avoided as Zen have a link into the FEX), and when CityFibre borked a load of Nokia ONTs back in January they had someone on site within three hours to register it back onto the network - whether that is a result of IDNet, the critical care level purchased on the service, or just a coincidence I can't tell.
 
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welshboy said:
I been on Zen 1600 since Jan and not fault them. I replaced the eero with unifi though.
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I need to think of an excuse so I can get a faster package while remaining on a discount. I'm on the 500Mbps at the moment. I used to be on the 300Mbps, but had the wonderful excuse, earlier this year when my contract ran out, that they no longer offer a 300Mbps service, so I was "forced" to go for the 500Mbps, which they promptly gave me for almost the same price. The next step up is 910Mbps and it would be nice to get that. Over the past year I have been using the service a lot more an average about 2TB a month, lol.
 
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