More Zzoomm problems

National outage this morning, by all accounts. I blame you lot
Go to FTTP it is more reliable, it is the futre.

I had fewer problems in the nine years I was with plusnet on FTTC than I had in the few weeks I have been with Zzoomm. I know these things happen and Zzoomm is still a new network, but it makes me think maybe I should have gone with now broadband and stayed on FTTC.

We will see how many more times they have problems until my contract comes up for renwal.

I even had to turn my coffee machine on this morning, instead of it coming on automatically, disgraceful

By the time your Zzoomm contract comes to an end you may only have Openreach FTTP as an alternative.

I have the same issue. Swapped to ZZOOMM this summer on FTTP but no connection today in Worcestershire.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

By the time your Zzoomm contract comes to an end you may only have Openreach FTTP as an alternative.

Now broadband still does FTTC and my zzoomm contract ends next year. openreach have not got to the 75% coverage yet here, which is what they need before they stop accepting orders for FTTC and then they have to give 12 months notice. so you are looking at 2025 at least.
Hopefully Zzoomm will sort things out and become more reliable. I have stuck up for Zzoomm a lot of their faceache pages where other people have had problems and i have also recommended them to other people, but at the moment I can't do that.
This is around 3 times now there have been a problem that affected me in just over 3 months, this is a system that I have been told on here and other forums is more reliable than the old system I was on.

From what I have heard, openreach own fibre is not much better, some people I chat to are on Open reach FTTP network and some of them have been saying about problems.

We will see, as I said i have 12 months, it is a shame as I had high hopes for Zzoomm, maybe I should have taken notice of the reviews.

In reply to a post by AxiD68:

I have the same issue. Swapped to ZZOOMM this summer on FTTP but no connection today in Worcestershire.

it was nationwide. The problem is with more and more devices and services relaying on the internet it needs to be spot on.
At some point in the future, all TV will be online, including the stuff people get from Freeview, people will be really peed off if they miss their coronation street because their broadband had failed.

The Openreach FTTC network runs on top of the infrastructure built out to be the FTTP network, it just terminates at a cabinet rather than on your wall.

I doubt anybody told you that all FTTP networks are more reliable than any FTTC network - people have correctly pointed out that an an FTTP access network cannot degrade in the way that copper can, it's not affected by the amount it rains, cannot pick up local radio interference etc. If none of your Zzoomm failures have been caused by problems on the local FTTP access network then that is still the case - deploying fibre in the last mile cannot make up for poor infrastructure in the core or a slack approach to change management that sees changes made that cause outages.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Go to FTTP it is more reliable, it is the futre.

You could join me on Virgin Media's coax cables... when the coax is working there is usually a network issue, when the network is working there is usually a coax issue.... 🤣

In reply to a post by jpm:

The Openreach FTTC network runs on top of the infrastructure built out to be the FTTP network, it just terminates at a cabinet rather than on your wall.

I doubt anybody told you that all FTTP networks are more reliable than any FTTC network - people have correctly pointed out that an an FTTP access network cannot degrade in the way that copper can, it's not affected by the amount it rains, cannot pick up local radio interference etc. If none of your Zzoomm failures have been caused by problems on the local FTTP access network then that is still the case - deploying fibre in the last mile cannot make up for poor infrastructure in the core or a slack approach to change management that sees changes made that cause outages.

People on this forum told me that FTTP is more reliable than FTTC as I was going to stay on FTTC.
It was a national failure by all accounts, Zzoomm went down everywhere, not just in this city. What is annoying is that nothing has been said about it on their social media, no sorry or explanation.

FTTC worked for me fine apart from the time it did not That was a long time again and to be honest it did still work, but only with one make of modem.

We will see what happens in the next 9 months or so.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Go to FTTP it is more reliable, it is the futre.

You could join me on Virgin Media's coax cables... when the coax is working there is usually a network issue, when the network is working there is usually a coax issue.... 🤣

I can't get Virgin here, there was a time many years ago before it become Virgin that I wished I could. i know the problems Virgin seems to have as well.,

You moved from a relatively mature network on an established provider to an new network with a provider that had very little established record.
I don't think FTTP is the problem but rather the rest of your providers network connectivity.

Statistically the FTTP connection from the exchange to the home is more reliable than a FTTC connection.

However, as Zzoomm is a relatively new provider and a relatively minor player there is likely little in the way of stats for how their service itself performs. You may have just been unlucky and got hit by a freak incident early in your contract - or Zzoomm might be a poorly designed ISP - only time will tell.

But, whilst Zzoomm don't sell non-FTTP products if they did then FTTC would have been affected exactly the same as the FTTP was - it was a problem in their back end network not in the FTTP connection.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

You moved from a relatively mature network on an established provider to an new network with a provider that had very little established record.
I don't think FTTP is the problem but rather the rest of your providers network connectivity.

FTTP is a new network no matter who I go with. I thought if I have to move from FTTC then I may as well go for a network that is on paper better than openreach network, also gets away from Openreach.
Looking at Zzoomm's status page,there seems to be a lot of scheduled maintenance. the was one this morning

This below was the reason that we had no internet.

Unplanned outage
Resolved - We are aware some customers have been experiencing problems accessing the internet since 05:42 this morning. Engineers diagnosed a problem getting internet addresses and have implemented a fix and all services should now be as normal. If you are still experiencing issues, please contact contact care on 033 33 11 99 33, or via [email protected]. We apologise for any inconveinience this incident has caused.

Getting internet addresses? Never heard that one before.

I don't know the more we rely on these things and the more we do online i think sometimes it is a bad idea.
I can understand why a couple I know don't bother with any of it, don't even have mobile phone in the house, still watch a CRT TV, but had to get a set-top box which I helped with. They pay by cash and no debit and credit card, and they seem less stressed than most people I know.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Statistically the FTTP connection from the exchange to the home is more reliable than a FTTC connection.

However, as Zzoomm is a relatively new provider and a relatively minor player there is likely little in the way of stats for how their service itself performs. You may have just been unlucky and got hit by a freak incident early in your contract - or Zzoomm might be a poorly designed ISP - only time will tell.

But, whilst Zzoomm don't sell non-FTTP products if they did then FTTC would have been affected exactly the same as the FTTP was - it was a problem in their back end network not in the FTTP connection.

Hopefully they will improve, or maybe I should have taken more noticed of the reports from people on Facebook. I thought it can't be that bad. the reviews were mixed, but most were good.

I have little choice but to stay unless they get really bad, this is why i prefer short contracts and not the silly 24-month ones that seem to be the norm now.

when it is working properly it is superfast, not that I need superfast broadband, but it did come in useful to send some files to a mate late last night, well early this morning, they have 1Gb/s, so got the speed to receive
We will wait and see, but it is difficult to recommend a service that don;lt seem to be reliable and i do want to recommend them,

You are missing that FTTP in this case is just the connection from the exchange to the house and whilst it is new it isn't really new technology.

The part that failed for Zzoomm wasn't the "new FTTP" it was their back end (network connectivity within the ISP network). With other established suppliers that back end has been in place for years and is the same back end for FTTP as for FTTC or ADSL. Even the established suppliers get issues in that back end at times. FTTP is the "last mile" connectivity and is not where Zzoomm had an issue.

The problem "getting Internet addresses" is either to do with the ability to hand IP addresses to the end user network (which in a LAN would be DHCP type services) or was to do with the ability to convert a domain name to an IP address (DNS).

Hopefully they will improve over time. More likely is that they will be bought by another network and folded into their services which if done right would provide a larger ISP that is more resilient.

Only time will tell if you made a good choice switching to Zzoommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The outages you've seen have nothing to do with the last mile being full fibre, its about you being with an altnet who may not be that good at the moment on their back end. If you had switched from Openreach FTTC to Openreach FTTP you would have probably seen the same (or better) reliability that you've had for many many years.

Even if I had altnets available to me I don't think I would switch until I could see they were reliable over a longer period of time.

Edited by PCJM40 (Wed 27-Sep-23 09:39:49)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I don't know the more we rely on these things and the more we do online i think sometimes it is a bad idea.
I can understand why a couple I know don't bother with any of it, don't even have mobile phone in the house, still watch a CRT TV, but had to get a set-top box which I helped with. They pay by cash and no debit and credit card, and they seem less stressed than most people I know.

This is my current concern with Sky Stream, what happens when your broadband goes down, at least with it via the Astra satellites it still works when your broadband doesn't.

I assume your IP stream will stop. If it's very important, think about a backup ISP for redundancy. There are several Routers on the market that will fail over to 4G if the main circuit goes down.

Edited by Adduxi (Wed 27-Sep-23 10:32:33)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

This is my current concern with Sky Stream, what happens when your broadband goes down, at least with it via the Astra satellites it still works when your broadband doesn't.

Sky Stream and the new Freely thing that will look eventually to replace the aerial TV transmissions ... as it uses a lot less electricity, and hence helps with the nations move to Net Zero by moving to internet. Sky Q is still available of course.

See Thinkbroadband news for info on Freely:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9705-freely-is-m...

Edited by jchamier (Wed 27-Sep-23 10:40:07)

FTTP is a new network no matter who I go with. I thought if I have to move from FTTC then I may as well go for a network that is on paper better than openreach network, also get away from Openreach.

you seem to have missed the point. It's not FTTP that is the cause of your problems apparently, but rather the rest of your providers network/connectivity. Longer established providers may have more resilience on their networks .

In reply to a post by witchunt:

Longer established providers may have more resilience on their networks .

Agreed 100%.... but even established organisations have failures that affect FTTP, FTTC and ADSL users. IT failures are their own complexity horizon.

Edited by jchamier (Wed 27-Sep-23 13:04:58)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Only time will tell if you made a good choice switching to Zzoommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The outages you've seen have nothing to do with the last mile being full fibre, its about you being with an altnet who may not be that good at the moment on their back end. If you had switched from Openreach FTTC to Openreach FTTP you would have probably seen the same (or better) reliability that you've had for many many years.

Even if I had altnets available to me I don't think I would switch until I could see they were reliable over a longer period of time.

I know what you mean, I was a bit annoyed since I have been on FTTC for 9 years and only one major problem, been on FTTP for like 3 months and had more than i should have.
The last outage affected other providers as well, by all accounts. Been ok since, we will see.

I don't really want to go back to Open reach now, but it seems when i try something different it comes back to bite me, like the wireless network I was on a few years agao.

We will see what happens.

I had a leaflet though the door yesterday from Talk Talk, saying full fibre is in my area, so they have finally realised that we have full fibre. even their website say we have FTTP now, only been 8 months. Not that I would go with Talk Talk if they were the last ISP in this country.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I had a leaflet though the door yesterday from Talk Talk, saying full fibre is in my area, so they have finally realised that we have full fibre. even their website say we have FTTP now, only been 8 months. Not that I would go with Talk Talk if they were the last ISP in this country.

and TalkTalk use the Openreach FTTP (and FTTC) networks. Pretty amazing your town has both an AltNet and OpenReach FTTP already... some large towns in the south east have no sign of either.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

and TalkTalk use the Openreach FTTP (and FTTC) networks. Pretty amazing your town has both an AltNet and OpenReach FTTP already... some large towns in the south east have no sign of either.

Shocked me when Zzoomm said they were coming here, I wondered who bribed them to come here. Openreach FTTP have been here for a few years in a couple of roads, I expect they would not have bothered to expand so quickly if Zzoomm did not come here, but they thought they were missing out.
Still a fair chunk of the city where Openreach FTTP is missing. A colleague lives in a road in one of the large estates, Zzoomm, but not Openreach, he decided to stay with BT even if it was slower than go with Zzoomm. He trusts BT, (stupid boy ). Saying that, I could not recommend Zzoomm at the moment, not until they get more reliable

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Saying that, I could not recommend Zzoomm at the moment, not until they get more reliable

Zzoom are in the small towns north of me, Crowthorne and Sandhurst.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Zzoom are in the small towns north of me, Crowthorne and Sandhurst.

They seem to be spreading very quickly, let's hope they are not expanding too quickly and run out of money.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Zzoom are in the small towns north of me, Crowthorne and Sandhurst.

They seem to be spreading very quickly, let's hope they are not expanding too quickly and run out of money.

They need to get as big as possible as quickly as their funding will allow. The more premises they pass the more customers they have reachable, the higher their potential income.

Slowing build and focusing on trying to maximise uptake in areas already passed is a signal of distress: the funding isn't there to continue building at that pace and a cash crunch is possible.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

They need to get as big as possible as quickly as their funding will allow. The more premises they pass the more customers they have reachable, the higher their potential income.

Slowing build and focusing on trying to maximise uptake in areas already passed is a signal of distress: the funding isn't there to continue building at that pace and a cash crunch is possible.

I thought it would be a good idea to get customers where they are first, the network building is what costs the money.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

They need to get as big as possible as quickly as their funding will allow. The more premises they pass the more customers they have reachable, the higher their potential income.

Slowing build and focusing on trying to maximise uptake in areas already passed is a signal of distress: the funding isn't there to continue building at that pace and a cash crunch is possible.

I thought it would be a good idea to get customers where they are first, the network building is what costs the money.

Yes it does, and it gets more expensive if you keep stopping and starting it as you keep making a bunch of people redundant then having to rehire. Same goes for contractors: they'll charge less for longer term work over a company that keeps building in bursts then pulling back so they get more expensive.

The money they make per customer after paying for their existing interest payments and operating costs isn't going to make a dent in network build costs. Pulling back build to focus on uptake indicates that the uptake isn't high enough for investors to keep the funding taps open and there isn't enough funding already secured without covenants dependent on uptake to keep building.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Tue 03-Oct-23 09:50:03)