Alternative to Zen?

I guess this sort of question has been asked so often, but I
wonder if anyone here is/was in my position and what they did?

I currently use Zen on the 1Mb service - no limits or anything
for £34 per month. Bit costly!

I am looking for an alternative:

Minimum 1Mb (ideally 2Mb or more)
No cap (or at the very least 2GB per day)
No set-up fees.
Allowed to use my own hardware/router.
Monthly payments - no annual contract.
All for under £25 per month? Under £20? Less?

I don't need email, web space, games servers, etc. Just a good
reliable service that's cheap and fast.

Obviously looking at PlusNET as they seem cheap, but they get
such mixed reports!

What service have other people moved to from Zen or any of the
other £30+ services?

--
Bryan Anderson <(E-Mail Removed)>

On 29 Apr 2005 10:19, Bryan Anderson wrote:

>Minimum 1Mb (ideally 2Mb or more)
>No cap (or at the very least 2GB per day)
>No set-up fees.
>Allowed to use my own hardware/router.
>Monthly payments - no annual contract.
>All for under £25 per month? Under £20? Less?

>I don't need email, web space, games servers, etc. Just a good
>reliable service that's cheap and fast.
>
>Obviously looking at PlusNET as they seem cheap, but they get
>such mixed reports!

You could always give them a try for a couple of months, and see if they are
up to doing what you want. Depending on which exchange you are on, you are
probably "just in time" to get a free upgrade to 2000 kbps (if you go onto
the Premier account at 21.99 a month) and if you've "missed the boat" by the
time your free migration comes through, you could upgrade for 14.99 (or even
upgrade for that fee, if the upgade shows your exchange won't be done for 2
or 3 months - see the PDF link in <http://makeashorterlink.com/?E64023DFA>
which should list your exchange - but might list it more than once). You'd
be able to get much higher speeds later, if your line will support them.

However, there are a few downsides with Plus.Net (one reason I'm not using
them for my ADSL connection, in fact) such as a strict policy concerning
the need for a business account if you are working from home (I'm a sole
trader) so they are definitely not for everyone if you are looking to pay
only for a residential product. Apologies if this doesn't apply, but it's
something worth pointing out to people (I had a second line with another
ISP so I could separate my use of Plus.Net from running my business).

One of my clients went with Eclipse (in part because they were far more
welcoming to Teleworkers, but also because of their invoices which made it
easy for him to reclaim the VAT). If you did go with Plus.Net you'd have
the option to migrate away again under their customer guarantee (which is
mentioned on their 'Migrate to us' web page, but I think applies to all
new customers... and you could try their newsgroups easily, for free,
from your current ISP, for 3 months; upgrade to Premier if you migrate.


--
Plus.Net <http://tinyurl.com/5jpa4>
I recommend them and save some cash.

With a guarantee allowing new users to migrate if they're unhappy!

Bryan Anderson wrote:
> I guess this sort of question has been asked so often, but I
> wonder if anyone here is/was in my position and what they did?
>
> I currently use Zen on the 1Mb service - no limits or anything
> for £34 per month. Bit costly!
>
> I am looking for an alternative:
I've been with Zen on 1mb and though it's more expensive than a lot of
ISPs, I wouldn't change as they are fast, reliable and (important to me)
allow up to 5 public static IP addresses and reverse DNS all as part of
the package. However, if this isn't important to you, try Metronet.
They are 11.75 per month and then charge per megabyte up to a max of 23
or 28 pounds (no cap). Useful if you use bandwidth in bursts. My G/F
has it and rarely pays more than £14 per month and it is fast and reliable.

So there you go, you pays your money and takes your choice !

Geoff

On 29 Apr 2005 16:11, Geoff <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>They are 11.75 per month and then charge per megabyte up to a max
>of 23 or 28 pounds (no cap). Useful if you use bandwidth in bursts.

Yes, handy if you live/work abroad part of the year, but the 11.75 is for
500 kbps. Worth also mentioning there's news from Supernews (?) included
but there's some speed limit so you cannot fill a connection sucking news
from them, in case that's important (the OP was on about 2 GB a day - not
sure if Metronet has any written guidelines on 'fair use' that would stop
that level of traffic from being acceptable... but if so, they would be a
bit cheaper than Zen at 1000 kbps anyway. Peter M.


--
Plus.Net <http://tinyurl.com/5jpa4>
I recommend them and save some cash.

With a guarantee allowing new users to migrate if they're unhappy!

Peter M wrote:
> On 29 Apr 2005 10:19, Bryan Anderson wrote:
>
>
>>Minimum 1Mb (ideally 2Mb or more)
>>No cap (or at the very least 2GB per day)
>>No set-up fees.
>>Allowed to use my own hardware/router.
>>Monthly payments - no annual contract.
>>All for under £25 per month? Under £20? Less?
>
>
>>I don't need email, web space, games servers, etc. Just a good
>>reliable service that's cheap and fast.
>>
>>Obviously looking at PlusNET as they seem cheap, but they get
>>such mixed reports!
>
>
> You could always give them a try for a couple of months, and see if they are
> up to doing what you want. Depending on which exchange you are on, youare
> probably "just in time" to get a free upgrade to 2000 kbps (if you go onto
> the Premier account at 21.99 a month) and if you've "missed the boat" by the
> time your free migration comes through, you could upgrade for 14.99 (oreven
> upgrade for that fee, if the upgade shows your exchange won't be done for 2
> or 3 months - see the PDF link in <http://makeashorterlink.com/?E64023DFA>
> which should list your exchange - but might list it more than once). You'd
> be able to get much higher speeds later, if your line will support them.

I've just requested my MAC today from Pipex and thinking of going to
PlusNet - on the PDF it says my Exchange is to be upgraded May 05 - what
does this mean for me if I want to go with either Plus or Premier
packages on PlusNet - given the timing?

On 29 Apr 2005 20:00, Dee wrote:

>what does this mean for me if I want to go with either Plus or Premier
>packages on PlusNet - given the timing?

If the migration goes ahead before they do work on the exchange you may
(or should!) be included. They would increase the speed for your link
to 2000 kbps if possible, 1000 kbps if the line would not take 2000,
or leave it on 500 if they had to. If you cannot switch in time (you
may have paid for 3 more weeks with your existing ISP and want to go
near the end of that time, rather than have to pay another ISP earlier
than necessary) then when you have switched, you will probably need to
pay them a fee of 14.99 to cover the BT charge for the speed hike and
get to 2000 kbps. (Much) later in the year you may consider 4000 kbps
if you feel keen, but it would be 24.99 on Broadband Plus (dynamic IP
and 100 MB traffic per day from website) or 29.99 for Premier, (with
a static IP and the more generous website traffic allowance, too).


--
Plus.Net <http://tinyurl.com/5jpa4>
I recommend them and save some cash.

With a guarantee allowing new users to migrate if they're unhappy!

On 29 Apr 2005 20:00, Dee wrote:

>if I want to go with either Plus or Premier packages

Since you haven't made your mind up yet... here's a post from a PN guy
which was made 20 minutes ago in plusnet.service.customer-feedback and
may help make your mind up...

Sid asked (extract copied/pasted - he's on the Broadband Plus 24.99 a/c
considering whether to just wait for 4000 to arrive, or switch to Premier):

>"i see that my Broadband Plus package will auto upgrade me to 4mb when
> it becomes available at my exchange, but would i be better off on the
> Premier Package at £21.99 as the contention ratio is lower, price
> is lower, and offers a few other bits like more web space.

Dave Tomlinson replied:

> There is a third option for you of changing to Broadband Plus up to
> 2Mbps at £14.99 per month. The key things to decide whether Broadband
> Plus or Premier is the right account is what you want to use the
> connection for.

> If mainly for web browsing, email, chat, online radio, gaming i.e.
> low "bursty" types of things then Broadband Plus is ideal. Or if
> you want to use a lot of P2P and make use of the extra webspace or
> CGI, or want a static IP address then I would say choose Premier.


--
Plus.Net <http://tinyurl.com/5jpa4>
I recommend them and save some cash.

With a guarantee allowing new users to migrate if they're unhappy!

On Friday, Peter M wrote:

> You could always give them a try for a couple of months,
> and see if they are up to doing what you want.

....and pay £60 to leave if they're not!

> Depending on which exchange you are on, you are probably
> "just in time" to get a free upgrade to 2000 kbps (if you
> go onto the Premier account at 21.99 a month) and if you've
> "missed the boat" by the time your free migration comes
> through, you could upgrade for 14.99 (or even upgrade for
> that fee, if the upgade shows your exchange won't be done
> for 2 or 3 months

Okay - my exchange shows July 2005. I assume therefore that
if I go with the Plus service (£15 per month) now, I will get
1Mb until July and then be automatically upgraded to 2Mb? Is
that how it works?

> However, there are a few downsides with Plus.Net (one reason
> I'm not using them for my ADSL connection, in fact) such as
> a strict policy concerning the need for a business account
> if you are working from home (I'm a sole trader) so they are
> definitely not for everyone if you are looking to pay only
> for a residential product. Apologies if this doesn't apply,
> but it's something worth pointing out to people (I had a
> second line with another ISP so I could separate my use of
> Plus.Net from running my business).

(a) how do they know if it's being used for business or not?
(b) what difference does it make to them?
(c) what if four people in the house use it for personal use,
but one person uses it for half an hour per day on some business
email?

> and you could try their newsgroups easily, for free, from
> your current ISP, for 3 months;

Sorry? How do I go about doing this?

> upgrade to Premier if you migrate.

I can't see the difference between the Plus and the Premier for
me. Lower contention ratio, but that's never been a problem for
me on Zen at 50:1. It says no SMTP server on the Plus, but I'll
be using the services provided by my web host anyway for POP3 &
SMTP. The web space is less featured, but again, I'll not be
using that, and I don't really need a static IP. What's the
advantages of the Premier account over the Plus for someone like
me?

--
Bryan Anderson <(E-Mail Removed)>

"Bryan Anderson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> I currently use Zen on the 1Mb service - no limits or anything
> for £34 per month. Bit costly!
>
> I am looking for an alternative:
>
> Minimum 1Mb (ideally 2Mb or more)
> No cap (or at the very least 2GB per day)
> No set-up fees.
> Allowed to use my own hardware/router.
> Monthly payments - no annual contract.
> All for under £25 per month? Under £20? Less?
>
> I don't need email, web space, games servers, etc. Just a good
> reliable service that's cheap and fast.
>
> What service have other people moved to from Zen or any of the
> other £30+ services?

If you are in a Bulldog LLU area, then have a look at them.

Otherwise, have a look at http://www.f2s.co.uk/adsl/homeuser.php

They have an account which offers a 50GB/month service for £24.99/month +
their cap does not include any bandwidth usage between 1am - 6am (that
period is unmetered)

If you migrate your 1MB service (free to migrate in), they will put you on a
monthly contract and upgrade your line for free to a 2MB one after the
migration has been completed (assuming your line supports the higher speed).

Regards
Sunil

"Peter M" <us-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) s.net...
> not
> sure if Metronet has any written guidelines on 'fair use' that would stop
> that level of traffic from being acceptable...

From friends on Metronet's service, 60GB/month (or even 100GB) would not
cause any issues - though you woudn't be their typical customer

Regards
Sunil