Business For home

The future of broadband: Three steps to a next level connection

Zen May 18 2023

Whether you’re streaming movies and TV shows around the home, video calling with friends, family and colleagues, working with cloud-based applications like Microsoft Office, or uploading and downloading important files or folders, one thing’s for certain: the better your broadband connection the better your experience.

And when it comes to better broadband, the main issues we hear about tend to be speed and reliability. People need connections that are fast enough for them to work, stream and chat without worrying about buffering or slow downloads. Reliability is just as important too, which means stable connections throughout the home or office, and not having to worry about disconnections or inconsistent service.

Choosing an award-winning provider like Zen can help – we’re the only Which? Recommended Provider for a reason – but what else can you do to get the best out of your broadband?

Here are three tips to get the performance you need.

1) Get an upgrade or speed boost

Okay, so this doesn’t sound like so much of a tip. It’s pretty easy to say: ‘if you want better broadband, get better broadband’.

But many of us are using broadband connections that aren’t quite up to what we’re demanding from them. As websites have developed to contain more and more information, as video streaming services have become mainstream, as video calling has replaced traditional communications, and as download sizes have grown massively, sometimes our existing internet connections can struggle with the load.

Just as an illustration, here’s an article that compares the average install size of Call of Duty games between 2003 and 2019. From 1.4GB in 2003 to 175GB in 2019, that’s a 125x increase. Larger install sizes mean bigger downloads, and these numbers reveal a telling story of the amount of bandwidth we need today compared with a few years ago.

And for games read everything else we do online. Our need for massively more broadband gets greater and greater all the time.

The point of all this: if your home or business broadband isn’t giving you the bandwidth you need, you can try all the tricks in the world and still be left short. And that’s why considering an upgrade when your broadband needs a boost is all-important.

Whether that’s an upgrade to full fibre when it’s available at your address or a simple speed boost (to a faster package), increasing the megabits that flow in and out of your home or office could give your internet connection a whole new lease of life.

If you’re a home or business broadband user looking for an upgrade or speed boost, give us a call. You can find the right contact details here.

For business users, there’s another option: a leased line connection.

Leased line broadband gives you uncontended access (the connection is exclusively yours) to our most reliable connectivity. When only the best will do, why compromise? Find out more about leased line broadband from Zen here.

2) Set up a mesh network

Whether you choose the upgrade option or not, there’s more to a great broadband experience than just your internet speed.

As fast as the broadband entering your home or office is, obstacles and distance from your router can have serious effects on your wireless connection.

And that’s where modern technology like mesh networking can help.

In case you need a reminder, a mesh network works by intelligently extending your wireless network to hard-to-reach places around the home or office. Whether that’s the loft or a far-flung meeting room, it’ll give your WiFi a boost, helping you to enjoy a smoother more reliable wireless connection in more rooms.

Zen’s answer to mesh networking is EveryRoom. And while there are plenty of mesh network systems to choose from, EveryRoom provides the unique benefit of not requiring you to pay for everything up front. Instead, we add a small monthly amount to your bill; plus you’ll also benefit from expert Zen support whenever you need it and a system built to work seamlessly with your Zen FRITZ!Box router.

You can read much more about the benefits of mesh networking and why you might benefit from EveryRoom here. If you’re ready to order, head over to our EveryRoom page.

3) Go Digital

As the Great British Switch Off approaches, older copper-based (ADSL and FTTC) broadband will first be withdrawn from sale and later switched off altogether.

And this will have a huge knock-on effect. Because when the copper network is retired, traditional telephone services will no longer function.

So if you’re still rocking that phone line in 2025 you’ll be very close to being unable to make or receive phone calls at home or in the office.

But as broadband connections move over to more modern technology like full fibre, there is a new product that will help to take care of your phone calling needs: Digital Voice.

Instead of sending voice calls over the copper telephone network, Digital Voice will make use of your broadband connection. It’s better value, often higher quality, and means you can have an internet connection without line rental.

To find out more about Digital Voice and make the switch before the switch off, visit our pages for home or business users.

With the switch off around the corner, if you haven’t already, you’ll soon have a next generation broadband connection delivering the internet to your home or office. But are you getting the most from your broadband?

Whether you need a speed boost, a technology upgrade, a mesh WiFi system or future-proof Digital Voice, it makes sense to choose a provider that’s been the ONLY Which? Recommended Provider for three years in a row, a 19-time PC Pro winner, and rated ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot.