Zen Internet now offering ultrafast full-fibre broadband

Credit: Luis Molinero/Shutterstock.com

The full-fibre packages come with or without line rental and are charged at competitive prices, with the 150Mb package costing less than the standard price for BT's up to 76Mb Infinity 2 service.

At either £52 or £76.99 a month, the packages include a free wi-fi router, completely unlimited data usage, and a free static IP address.

Yet while Zen Internet have a strong reputation for customer service, the launch of the new services is spoiled slightly by the fact that only 1.9% of the population will have access to them.

Packages

Zen Internet had in fact already been offering full-fibre broadband to the public, yet the two packages available earlier provided identical speeds to the two top fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) tiers sold by providers on the Openreach network.

Now, however, they've added two ultrafast FTTP packages to complement these first two, with the important details listed below:

All the above packages come with completely unlimited usage, and all require a £55 activation fee to be paid.

Demand and prices

Much like BT, Sky, TalkTalk, and Plusnet, Zen Internet run on the Openreach network, yet they have to be commended for beating these four providers (and others) in the race to offer full-fibre broadband products.

By offering services that are faster and more reliable than copper-based FTTC broadband Zen will help stimulate demand for FTTP broadband, which despite seeing a modest increase in recent months is still suffering from a lack of public interest.

They'll be helped in this by the fact that the prices for their FTTP products are very competitive, with their equivalent FTTC services being identical in price (save for a 1p difference in the up to 38Mb category).

Ratings

Not only is their new 150Mb is cheaper than BT's up to 76Mb Infinity 2 package, for instance, but Zen also have a strong reputation for customer service to recommend them.

They came in first in an April Which? poll on who is the best broadband provider in terms of customer service, speed and reliability, with TalkTalk and BT coming bottom.

They also receive a four out of five rating on Trustpilot, while the likes of BT, Virgin Media and Sky all currently have a one out of five rating.

1.9% of the UK

However, despite competitive pricing and a good track record for giving customers what they pay for, there is one major downside to Zen's newly launched full-fibre products.

They run on the Openreach FTTP network, which currently covers 1.9% of the UK's premises (it goes up to 3.4% if you happen to be in Wales, and down to 0.25 if you're in Scotland).

At the moment, this works out at around 500,000 premises (including businesses), meaning that only a small handful of customers will be able to receive a full-fibre connection.

Checking postcodes

Still, given that FTTP broadband is that much better than its part-copper counterpart, interested customers would still be advised to check the Zen website or at least with one of Zen's full-fibre rivals.

If everyone who is in reach of a full-fibre connection does this, then it would only make future investment in additional FTTP connections more likely.

And in turn, this will make full-fibre broadband more available, and give the UK the kind of digital infrastructure so many people have been calling for recently.