Thanks for all the advice and help I have received today. Since logging the issue with Zen I have gone througfh hoops to eliminate all possible causes of poor speeds. The engineer from Openreach has been excellent and extremely thorough. This evening he used Openreach equipment to log into Openreach's own network (isolated from Zen's servers) direct from the ONT and recorded speeds above 980Mbps. When he put the network back to Zen the speed dropped considerably. He has reported this back to Zen and suggested a Zen backhaul issue might be to blame. Zen support has confirmed to me this evening that they will now investigate as it is clearly not an issue with my setup of the fibre connection but is within the scope of Zen's competence.
I will now await further developments. I would hate to leave Zen and go to BT because Zen cannot honour their speed guarantee and I feel sure they won't let that happen.

In reply to a post by chriswillsher:

Thanks for all the advice and help I have received today. Since logging the issue with Zen I have gone througfh hoops to eliminate all possible causes of poor speeds. The engineer from Openreach has been excellent and extremely thorough. This evening he used Openreach equipment to log into Openreach's own network (isolated from Zen's servers) direct from the ONT and recorded speeds above 980Mbps. When he put the network back to Zen the speed dropped considerably. He has reported this back to Zen and suggested a Zen backhaul issue might be to blame. Zen support has confirmed to me this evening that they will now investigate as it is clearly not an issue with my setup of the fibre connection but is within the scope of Zen's competence.
I will now await further developments. I would hate to leave Zen and go to BT because Zen cannot honour their speed guarantee and I feel sure they won't let that happen.

If you look at the Zen board on this Forum you will see that there is an ongoing saga of poor speeds recorded through their network. IIRC, they have also now modified their Ts & Cs and only guarantee to provide service at about half of the headline rate so they may well be honouring that even with your reduced speeds. That could leave you with a hefty bill if you decide to leave mid-contract.

Best of luck with them.

Not really. As I have lived with speeds of around 2Mbps for many years in a rural backwater I decided that now I had a fast fibre service I would indulge myself with the fastest available to see what it is like. I was the lead for a community fibre partnership in the village where we lived but left just as everyone was getting connected up. Pure self indulgence on my part, not necessity I confess,

Yes, I am aware of some of these issues. Point noted! Thanks. Time will tell.

In reply to a post by chriswillsher:

Thanks for all the advice and help I have received today. Since logging the issue with Zen I have gone througfh hoops to eliminate all possible causes of poor speeds. The engineer from Openreach has been excellent and extremely thorough. This evening he used Openreach equipment to log into Openreach's own network (isolated from Zen's servers) direct from the ONT and recorded speeds above 980Mbps. When he put the network back to Zen the speed dropped considerably. He has reported this back to Zen and suggested a Zen backhaul issue might be to blame. Zen support has confirmed to me this evening that they will now investigate as it is clearly not an issue with my setup of the fibre connection but is within the scope of Zen's competence.
I will now await further developments. I would hate to leave Zen and go to BT because Zen cannot honour their speed guarantee and I feel sure they won't let that happen.

Its a very odd form of fault investigation from Zen, as I assume they will get billed from the visit, given that they have many open tickets already with back haul issues, they just throwing money away at this point on these wasted call outs.

it may not even be the back haul, and but the server config at zen(or lack of network kit). Its very hard from the outside to guess, as both a bottleneck inside of zen and a lack of peering back haul will create the above issues.

Thanks. After the Openreach engineer proved the line was OK by connecting the ONT to the BTW servers, he told Zen that the problem was down to their network. I now await news from Zen.
This morning I have taken the step to make a formal declaration to Zen that they are not meeting the minimum guaranteed service level so the 30 day clock will start ticking.
From what I read elsewhere, most speed problems relate to the GEA connection Zen now uses. I cannot see what my service uses but apparently there are three that they can link you to, BTW, TTB and their own "Plexus".
This morning my d/l speed couldn't even make it to 100 and I'm on the 900 package.

In reply to a post by chriswillsher:

most speed problems relate to the GEA connection Zen now uses. I cannot see what my service uses but apparently there are three that they can link you to, BTW, TTB and their own "Plexus".

Most of the previous issues have been related to when users were quietly migrated off of BTW to Plexus, I do not know of any users who have had the issue satisfactory resolved while still stay on Plexus, most of the time Zen have moved affected users back to BTW. There are users who have reported the issue has disappeared but Zen does not seem to know what fixed it. I believe users who have been migrated will see an entry in when they login to the Zen portal and check any processed orders.

I realise you are not getting your full speed but you might be better off, less stress, holding back on the constant speed testing. If your household is being affected by the lower speed then bagder them to sort something out.

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by chriswillsher:

most speed problems relate to the GEA connection Zen now uses. I cannot see what my service uses but apparently there are three that they can link you to, BTW, TTB and their own "Plexus".

Most of the previous issues have been related to when users were quietly migrated off of BTW to Plexus, I do not know of any users who have had the issue satisfactory resolved while still stay on Plexus, most of the time Zen have moved affected users back to BTW. There are users who have reported the issue has disappeared but Zen does not seem to know what fixed it. I believe users who have been migrated will see an entry in when they login to the Zen portal and check any processed orders.

I knew that some zen users where having issues but not to this extent! Thats a mess and a half, and not easy solution.