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| davew Member Since: 02 Jan 2012 Location: North Yorkshire Posts: 888   
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I've used Zen for a number of years after trying a number of different suppliers. Whilst the fibre/copper is all BT that only accounts for the connection between you and the exchange.
I work from home so a good solid reliable internet connection is far more important than saving a few quid and Zen have provided that for at least 6 years now (can't remember exactly how long). I use a VPN connection a lot of the time and it's not unusual for this to have an "up" time without dropouts running into weeks at a time. In general you get what you pay for I guess, Zen aren't cheap but I'd rather have good reliable service than save a few quid. http://www.yorkshireoffroadclub.net/ |
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30th Oct 2015 5:49pm |
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| Lambley Member Since: 20 Apr 2013 Location: Mid Devon Posts: 1435  
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Been ringing around again today, Zen seem good but can't offer unlimited broadband, they can offer 50mb, 200 or 500.
How much is 50mb? I don't download games or films, mainly just surf the web, emails etc. EE said they will be uncompetitive because we are in an 'Offnet' area, if we were closer to a city or on fibre they would be cheaper, they were nearly £50 pm. So far it's looking like swapping to Plusnet, it doesn't matter if it's business or not, it all comes out of the same pocket at the end of the day and Business tends to be more expensive. Cheers so far, big help. |
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30th Oct 2015 6:49pm |
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| Hairysteve Member Since: 15 Jun 2015 Location: Surrey Posts: 692 
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Hope this helps!
Data consumption: Email – Without attachments, the average email is around 10KB for personal emails – or 20 to 30KB, for work. With attachments, it can be anything from 500K for one photo, to several MB for large documents. Websites – The average website takes around 500KB to load. And an hour of browsing takes around 15MB. Social media – Twitter uses very little data – Facebook uses more. Tweeting a message uses about 500KB, but if you're uploading lots of photos, it'll use more. Music – Downloading one song uses around 3 to 10MB. Video clips, TV shows and films – An average video clip's about 1.5MB, a TV show's around 37.5 MB and a film approximately 225MB. In HD, it's more like 3MB for a clip, 95MB for a TV show and 570MB for a film. Sat Nav – Depending on how far you're going, an average trip takes 15MB (based on 500KB for every screen refresh). How much data does the average person need each month? Roughly speaking: 500MB a month is enough to: Browse for 6 hours Send 8000 emails without attachments or 160 with attachments Download 8 songs Watch 6 clips or 20 minutes of TV |
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30th Oct 2015 9:22pm |
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| Lambley Member Since: 20 Apr 2013 Location: Mid Devon Posts: 1435
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Cheers Hairy, I think I got the figure wrong, they offered 50Gb not Mb, big difference, so you recon 50Gb p.m. should be more than enough for an average user?
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30th Oct 2015 10:10pm |
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| Retroanaconda Member Since: 04 Jan 2012 Location: Scotland Posts: 2646 
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I have my internet via 3 as the ADSL is useless round here and we will never ever get fibre but by luck I happen to have a good 3G signal. Far cheaper than landline-based services too as no line rental to pay. Good speed too, up to around 8 or 9 Mbps.
Monthly allowance is 15Gb which is just about enough for me on my own, wouldn't mind a bit more headroom though. Then again I could have two accounts and still be paying less than BT etc. |
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30th Oct 2015 11:21pm |
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| Hairysteve Member Since: 15 Jun 2015 Location: Surrey Posts: 692
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Yea that will more than meets your needs  |
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31st Oct 2015 7:27am |
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| Cupboard Member Since: 21 Mar 2014 Location: Suffolk Posts: 2971 
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Please bear in mind the difference between Mb and MB. The former is Mega Bits, (always written with a little b in the contractions) and is the normal rating of connection speed. The latter is Mega Bytes, (big B) and is normally but not always what your usage limits are measured in. There are 8 bits in a byte.
So, a 1GB film download would take up 1/50th of a 50GB monthly allowance, and if you had a connection of 8Mb/s (that's the maximum of old style ADSL that's been around for years, newer ADSL can go quicker) then that's 1MB/s or 1000 seconds to download your film. 1000 not 1024? Well maybe. Different standards exist, but that's just getting irritating pedantic and is a lot less significant than the difference between a bit and a byte. |
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31st Oct 2015 6:54pm |
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| JJ Member Since: 18 May 2009 Location: Winchester Posts: 932 
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Talk Talk business package for me £40 a month for all calls ( landlines and mobile ) and unlimited broadband with 24hr up time if it breaks. Around here talk talk use the fibre optics that were installed in the early 90s so the speed and reliability are very good.
In the recent well publicised hack the business site remained up and working so I assume it is separate infrastructure from the retail side ( only an assumption ). |
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1st Nov 2015 10:20am |
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| Lambley Member Since: 20 Apr 2013 Location: Mid Devon Posts: 1435
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Unfortunately we don't have fibre in this area yet, with the remote location I don't suppose it'll be any time soon either.
At the moment the service is good, never dropped, but the billing side of things is terrible, I spend hours on the phone sorting it out every time a bill comes. It's just a shame BT are so poor. It looks like (value wise) I could take a chance and go for the Post Office (which use Talk Talk) or go for Plusnet (BT), or pay a bit more and go for Zen, what confuses me is, they must all use the same exchange and cables, so why are some better/faster/more reliable than others? |
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1st Nov 2015 10:29am |
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| Lost for Words Member Since: 18 Jun 2015 Location: Warminster, Wiltshire Posts: 200 |
Certain ISPs will have different equipment in the exchange, as well as different traffic management protocols etc.
Visiting from DISCO3.CO.UK
Discovery 3 TDV6 Auto HSE Zambezi Silver  |
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1st Nov 2015 10:45am |
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