Zen and CityFibre - passing the buck on full-fibre install

This is not the first time I am using the forum both to seek advice and to let off steam! I'm a Zen customer. Zen are the ISP at our home in Scotland. They provide an FTTC broadband service (FTTP not yet available in our location) and VOIP. After some major incompetence over the original switch from Plusnet in Jan 2025 - described in a separate post - the Zen service has been solidly reliable. That's the good news.... Now for the latest episode in the saga.

We have a flat in Newcastle (Inherited from our late parents-in-law) which we use essentially as a second home when we visit.. It is a ground floor flat in a modern purpose-built apartment block. For several years we have had Plusnet broadband there along with their 'home phone' service, using the original BT phone line into the flat (ie an FTTC connection). Recently we relinquished the landline phone as we did not need it and knew that traditional landline phones were due to be phased out.

This month, our current [24 month] contract with Plusnet for broadband at the flat came to an end. As the managing agents for the apartment block had fairly recently arranged for CityFibre to install a full fibre (FTTP) connection and network into the entire building, we decided to get a full-fibre service into our flat. This meant placing an order with any one of the dozen or so ISPs that "partnered" with CityFibre to provide a service using their network . Zen was one such ISP, so we placed an order with them.

In theory, the process should have been simple and straightforward. Both CityFibre and Zen confirmed the order and sent guidance explaining that an engineer would have to visit in order to drill a hole in the wall of our flat to bring the fibre-optic cable from the connection-box in the lobby/hallway of the building through into our flat, where they would install an ONT on the inside of the wall in our study/bedroom. An appointment date was fixed: we had to arrange a special trip down from Scotland - two days plus an overnight stay - in order to be present and enable access to the premises by the CityFibre engineer.

The day came. The engineer who came wore a CityFibre jacket but was actually from Kelly Communications, their subcontractor. He arrived at the property with no information about the floorplan or layout of the flats in the building. He had no idea - and seemed not to understand - how the fibre network had been installed (by CityFibre!) within the building. He appeared not to know how and why the fibre-optic connection boxes had been fitted in the service-cupboards outside the entrance to each flat. At one stage he claimed that they should be "normally located above the entrance door to each flat". We had to arrange with neighbours for him to look at the way the fibre cables had been routed into the service-cupboards in the landing/hallway of each floor and connected into some of the other adjacent flats in the building. He had no information or diagrams indicating where and how the other services (electricity wiring, water pipes etc) were located - they too are routed into and through the same service-cupboards. He then spent considerable time trying - and failing - to telephone various supervisors or technical advisers or managers to get advice. Most were evidently unreachable. He complained that their phones were switched off or that they were "in meetings". Whoever he did manage eventually to contact had no clear idea about the routes of the fibre cables into and around the building. He was having to seek advice remotely on the basis of images he sent them using his mobile phone camera.

In principle the task was simple. A single hole needed to be drilled from the service cupboard directly through the wall into the adjacent bedroom/study in our flat, to feed the very slim and fragile fibre-optic wire through to where the ONT needed to be fixed adjacent to a power-socket (for the Zen router). But the engineer was hesitant or unwilling to do this without authority from his technical supervisors or a surveyor. It seemed he was concerned about the risk of hitting some wiring or pipework within the wall (there is no obvious evidence of this...).

Instead he suggested an indirect route for the cable - through the front wall beside the flat's entrance door, along the hallway skirting board, through an internal wall into the back of a built-in wardrobe, around the inside of the wardrobe, through another partition wall into the study/bedroom, along the skirting board and up to the location where he would put the ONT. This alternative meant drilling through three walls and having the fragile optic cable make no less than eight or nine 90-degree bends.

He admitted that this was "a bodge", was technically unsatisfactory, would degrade the signal, result in significant data loss and slower speed, and was in practical and visual terms undesirable. We told him that it was unacceptable. In other flats, the fibre-optic cable had been routed straight through the wall between service-cupboard and bedroom/study.

The engineer concluded that the only way forward would be to have a survey-engineer (he referred to "an auditor") inspect the site and indicate and authorise where the hole for the cable should be drilled in order to install the feed and an ONT in our flat. He said he would report and recommend accordingly. So after three hours (and our three-day visit and stopover) the installation was not carried out.

We contacted Zen to report all this and to ask them to arrange with CityFibre for a survey and for a satisfactory decision on the cable-route and ONT installation. We warned that we would need firm assurances about the attendance of surveyor and engineer on the same day and completion of the installation, before arranging a second three-day visit down from Scotland.

Zen Customer Services initially agreed to pursue this with CityFibre. But two days later we got a message from them saying that CityFibre would not carry out a survey but would only arrange another engineer visit (the same or a different engineer), who would assess and decide the route for the cable.

This is unsatisfactory. It takes us no further forward. We have told Zen, and asked them formally to escalate the matter with CityFibre and also within Zen's own management, in order to ensure delivery of a sensible and technically-competent solution. We await a response. But already it seems that we face the possibility of pass-the-parcel between Zen, CityFibre, and Kelly Comms the subcontractor, with none taking direct responsibility for decisions and delivery.

We seem to be in a Catch 22 situation. If Zen cannot sort things out, there seems no advantage in looking to an alternative ISP, since each and all of them will in any case be relying on CityFibre (and their subcontractor) to do the installation work, route the cable, and fit the ONT.

And it seems that if we abandon the idea of getting full fibre (FTTP) into our flat - even though there is a fibre service into the building - then we may no longer be able to revert to the previous arrangement of an FTTC broadband connection using the BT line which originally provided the landline phone. Apparently ISPs will not now accept an order for such a service ..... because FTTP is shown as being available, courtesy of CityFibre, into the apartment block!

What are the chances, and what are the options, for solving this problem, I wonder....

Unless your flat in an exchange area is in a current fibre priority programme you should be able to order or migrate the existing WBC FTTC service to SOGEA If there are no restrictions Not sure about them selling New SOGEA services what does this say https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Unless your flat in an exchange area is in a current fibre priority programme you should be able to order or migrate the existing WBC FTTC service to SOGEA If there are no restrictions Not sure about them selling New SOGEA services what does this say https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

Thanks Tommy - but you'll have to explain/translate how to use that BT Wholesale broadband checker. I am not at the flat in Newcastle right now: I'm up in Scotland.

The BT website asks me to put in either the phone number or the DN/ALID in order to check the availability of line-based services (FTTC/SOGEA) at that property. Well there is now no phone number in our flat - the landline number was relinquished a year or more ago.

And I have no idea what the DN/ALID is for that property nor how to find it. I am not actually at the premises, and the existing [Plusnet] broadband contract either has lapsed or is about to. So how do I find out the DN/ALID reference in order to use the BT broadband checker?

To be blunt, you're not going to get a survey visit for a broadband product, and the fact you're travelling from Scotland is not relevant to the ISP. You can and do have a complaint about the wasted appointment.

In Openreach land (assuming they didn't know how a building worked), the job would be tasked back out to someone who knew what to do rather than cancelled and left to the ISP to re-book.

I suspect an actual CityFibre employee would have been able to do this successfully, but unless Zen can arrange this you're probably going to go through this cycle a few more times.

Edited by jpm (Sun 27-Sep-26 19:34:34)

You can revert to your FTTC service, but some ISPs , once City Fibre is available (although a problematic CF installation in your case ) will always seek to use it.

Sky , Vodafone and Zen are in this category, prioritising CF over Openreach (FTTP or FTTC ) once CF is available , so getting your FTTC up and running again (if that’s your choice ) is just the case of using an ISP that doesn’t dismiss OR because CF is available, it’s a misunderstanding if you think you have to use CF FTTP because it’s available, that’s really only the case when Openreach FTTP is available, then Openreach FTTC becomes difficult to reorder , clearly OR don’t refuse anyone service just because the competition has FTTP available, that would be ludicrous, ISP are at liberty to make a choice and ignore OR and only use CF once it’s available , the three ISP quoted make that choice , but that’s not every ISP .

As far as the other matter , you could always drill the access hole yourself in advance of the visit , then the contractor would have no reason to worry about the consequences should a hidden service be hit ,( which probably would be instant dismissal) once its not the contractor on the hook for the potential damage or repair , realistically there is no reason why they wouldn’t use an access hole made by you .

TBH I can see why the contractor would be reluctant to take a chance making a hole from a service cupboard into the flat as that is not the usual way ingress into a property is made , and would be contrary to any training they received, so any difficulty resulting from doing something non standard leaves them exposed, if CF have direct labour installers they at least have some employment protection, so you can see why the contractor wants to defer to CF , if CF can’t or won’t arrange that , then reappointment seems a little pointless.

Edited by Iniltous (Sun 27-Sep-26 21:59:14)

In reply to a post by br1anstorm:

he was concerned about the risk of hitting some wiring or pipework within the wall

Do these installers not carry Cable & Pipe Locators?

They are not particularly expensive and I would have thought that they would be standard issue to anyone whose job involved drilling holes?

In reply to a post by MK65:

Do these installers not carry Cable & Pipe Locators?

The Openreach installer that did the FTTP install to my daughter's house didn't - or at least didn't use one - and drilled into a hidden heating pipe. The previous owner had removed a radiator and left the buried pipe in the wall with a cap end. The installer thought that my daughter should sort out the repair.

Use the address version of the checker at the top of the checker page. No need for the phone number or Access Line ID. Enter the postcode and select the property from the drop down list.

You were unfortunate to get a clueless contractor who clearly had no idea what to do.
Better luck next time.

In reply to a post by MK65:

In reply to a post by br1anstorm:

he was concerned about the risk of hitting some wiring or pipework within the wall

Do these installers not carry Cable & Pipe Locators?

They are not particularly expensive and I would have thought that they would be standard issue to anyone whose job involved drilling holes?

They don't really work for anything other than locating cables chased into a wall. If you have a partition wall with a plastic pipe running across it you're asking for the detector to pick that up when it's 50mm+ away from the wall surface and surrounded with insulation, and they can't do that in a reliable way.

The terms that these installers work to are also terrible, where they'd find themselves liable for the full costs of remediation and then sacked. It's not fair to paint this as an image of people not willing to use their initiative in contrast to how directly employed labour working for BT and protected by a strong trade union would have approached things.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

You can revert to your FTTC service, but some ISPs, once City Fibre is available (although a problematic CF installation in your case ) will always seek to use it.

Sky , Vodafone and Zen are in this category, prioritising CF over Openreach (FTTP or FTTC) once CF is available , so getting your FTTC up and running again (if that’s your choice ) is just the case of using an ISP that doesn’t dismiss OR because CF is available, it’s a misunderstanding if you think you have to use CF FTTP because it’s available, that’s really only the case when Openreach FTTP is available, then Openreach FTTC becomes difficult to reorder , clearly OR don’t refuse anyone service just because the competition has FTTP available, that would be ludicrous, ISP are at liberty to make a choice and ignore OR and only use CF once it’s available , the three ISP quoted make that choice , but that’s not every ISP .

Thanks for that helpful description of the attitudes of various ISPs. With the help of the post from @Realalemadrid, I've looked at the BT broadband checker to see what the position is regarding our particular flat. This is what it says:

VDSL Range A (Clean) WBC FTTC Unavailable WBC SOGEA Available
VDSL Range B (Impacted) WBC FTTC unavailable WBC SOGEA Available

In the footnotes it says

FTTP Priority Exchange Y
WLR Withdrawal Y
SOADSL Restriction N

It also says "...ADSL ADSL+2 and SOADSL are not available due to WLR withdrawal stop sell rules.... [but] CPs should order FTTP or SOGEA...."

Others may understand these cryptic details better than me. We know that OpenReach do not offer FTTP, because the FTTP to the building is provided by CityFibre. But the BT broadband checker details appear to suggest that SOGEA (ie broadband to the cabinet and then by the old copper phone line into the flat) is available - but just for broadband, not telephone.

So.... if CityFibre cannot deliver a decent FTTP fibre connection into our flat because of the problem described in my original post, can we instead ask for a SOGEA service using the existing BT OpenReach connection? And if so how do we do this? Presumably we have to place an order via an ISP which continues to collaborate with Openreach to provide a SOGEA service. How do we find such an ISP?

Would Zen - even if they PREFER to offer full-fibre FTTP via the CityFibre network - be prepared to provide part-fibre SOGEA via the existing OpenReach connection, which would not need any new cables or drilling of any new holes in walls?