Is Zen really that good?!

Currently with Be on ADSL. I think I want to go to Fibre before Sky get around to moving me over. (Sky bought Be, most Be punters not happy about that, mass defections.)

I require a fixed IP. I had though Plus Net my only reasonably priced option until I noticed Zen's new packages. I know of Zen's reputation, but are they 50% better?

I'm paying Be (aka Sky) around £28 for ADSL and line rental. A Plus Net fibre connection and phone will only cost and extra few pounds per month, £20 plus £14.50 = £34.50. Zen are asking 50% more for their fibre at £30 plus £15.44 line rental = £45.44. A bigger jump in cost!

There are other savings with Plus Net (discounted fibre for 9 months as well as the option to reduce the line rental fee).

Do I really want to be paying an additional £10 per month to Zen? Are they really that much better?

you will know depending on the number of replies to your posting.

In my view, you would be hard to tell the difference. If it were not for the fact that SKY currently do not offer a static IP address, then you could have used that also (so long as you are not using SKY for business purposes). There is talk of SKY actually allowing static IP and your own router when BT go to self install (rumour).

Is it not true that all of these providers use the same underlying technology and service provision into your house for FTTC. The only differentiator is then the options the ISP activate on the line (speed vs stability, static ip, speed of the line itself), the cost of that service and finally their backend network from the exchanges into their own network to the internet.

Its getting to be from a service point of view there is no difference, but from a features/cost point of view it is different.

Zen and PlusNet differ somewhat in philosophy, but both are clearly very competent providers with attractive products.


Zen's primary focus is on the business market, though they have always catered for home customers wanting a premium product and might well be more active in this market than historically was the case. If you want, you can buy a Zen leased line or a Zen multi-line VoIP solutions.

Zen's philosophy is typically to operate their broadband services in a way where no contention will be noticed at the links into their network and beyond. They have installed their own points of presence in approximately 200 exchanges; where GEA-FTTx handover takes place at an exchange with Zen presence, Zen use their own network for backhaul. In all other areas, Zen use BT Wholesale WBMC. There is no price difference between 'on network' and 'off network' users.

Zen's customer service operation is UK based. In my experience, you get through with minimal delay to someone who is technically adept - there does not seem to be any first line staff who can only trot out standard solutions. You can get a flavour of Zen customer service from the issues I had last week, which turned out to be a BT Wholesale fault in Milton Keynes.

With Zen, a static IPv4 address is standard. I believe IPv4 blocks are still available on request if you can provide RIPE justification for them - historically customers could have a /29 free of charge and larger blocks for a one-off fee (I gave extensive technical justification for two non-NAT subnets, for which a /28 is the minimum allocation, so I have a /28). With IPv4 depletion, I suspect the threshold for allocating multiple IPv4 addresses is now rather higher, though if you can justify why NAT is not a complete solution for you, Zen may still be able to help.

Zen have said IPv6 is part of their roadmap, but have said they will not launch it until they have a complete product. For now, I use SixXS via the gblon2 PoP, at the cost of 7ms latency (the RTT from Zen's network in Manchester to LINX) and 20 bytes per packet (for the IPv4 protocol 41 encapsulation). I look forward to native IPv6 from Zen, though am aware that I am in a minority in operating a router/firewall with full IPv6 support (in my case, a rack mount server running pfSense).

Zen's minimum contract period for FTTx is 12 months, reflecting the minimum 12 month period of the underlying BT Openreach GEA-FTTx connection.



PlusNet are primarily if not entirely targeting at the residential market. I have never used their services personally, though I have recommended them to several people looking for a quality residential broadband product at a competitive price.

My impression is that PlusNet operate their network somewhat closer to saturation than Zen do, in order to keep their BT Wholesale backhaul costs down, but their use of traffic management typically ensures any contention has minimal impact on the customer experience.

PlusNet use the BT Wholesale network in all areas. Their pricing depends on the Ofcom 'market' classification of the exchange, with Market 1 customers paying a supplement over the listed prices.

PlusNet's customer support is UK based, and seems to go down well with the majority of their users.

With PlusNet, a single static IPv4 address can be obtained for a one-off fee of £5. Routed IPv4 blocks are not possible. PlusNet have not announced any IPv6 plans.

PlusNet's minimum period for FTTx is 18 months.


Ultimately, you must balance up the factors. We rely on our Internet connection for business purposes, and have found it easy over the ten years we have been with Zen to justify the relatively small monthly premium over consumer ISPs.

Of course, any form of Internet connection is fallible and DSL does not carry a service level agreement. We have backups for the occasional outage, primarily mobile broadband contracts on two different mobile networks.


It sounds like both Zen and PlusNet would be a good match to your needs.

If you are seriously considering Zen, make sure you think critically about the speed estimate. If your line is unlikely to manage much more than 40/10 Mbit/s, you can save £3/month by taking Unlimited Fibre 1, which is based on the 40/10 wholesale product rather than the more expensive 80/20 wholesale product. Unfortunately, the £30 activation fee on Unlimited Fibre 1 wipes out this small saving for the first ten months.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Oct-13 19:09:44)

Good writeup but my view of plusnet differs to yours.

Both providers do cater for tech minded users, but plusnet is also a budget isp, and I dont consider them high quality.

Zen's higher price point alone is an attraction as its 'insurance' if you like that will keep the masses away from it to aid in avoiding network saturation.

Both providers aim to hide visible congestion, zen seem to do it the honest way by keeping capacity ahead of demand, plusnet seem to do it by robbing paul to pay pete, although plusnet rep's have claimed earlier in the year they have plenty of capacity.

Personally I am heavily leaning to zen currently, but annoyed my exchange isnt enabled for their network (yet the neighbouring exchange just a few 100m of it is), seems odd zen would pay for fiber to my city to connect just one single exchange and at least also not the one close to it. Plus the 12 month contract is scaring me off. As in the past when I have been on smaller isp's I have found they tend to focus only on uk peering, then when EU and US/ASIA sites are slow they just say things like its the internet not our fault look this uk site is fast so we are innocent. Whilst the majorisp's tend to have better worldwide peering, thats why I am holding off as I cant 'trial' the zen network.

I use Zen mainly their contract length is shorter and a good overall ISP. They are independent isp where plus net is owned by BT group.

Thanks iand. Sky say they will allow Be customers to keep their fixed IP (but only one) when they are transferred over. If they were doing that this week I'd probably just stay but they are unlikely to move me until next spring. I'd rather get Fibre now as it's become available in my area.

In reply to a post by David_W:

If you are seriously considering Zen, make sure you think critically about the speed estimate. If your line is unlikely to manage much more than 40/10 Mbit/s, you can save £3/month by taking Unlimited Fibre 1, which is based on the 40/10 wholesale product rather than the more expensive 80/20 wholesale product. Unfortunately, the £30 activation fee on Unlimited Fibre 1 wipes out this small saving for the first ten months.

Ah, yes. Hadn't noticed that. I'm told by the checker to expect 57.2 down and 15.7 up so I'd go for Fibre 1. Thanks for the other info. I think Zen makes sense from a piece of mind point of view.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Personally I am heavily leaning to zen currently, but annoyed my exchange isnt enabled for their network (yet the neighbouring exchange just a few 100m of it is), seems odd zen would pay for fiber to my city to connect just one single exchange and at least also not the one close to it. Plus the 12 month contract is scaring me off.

Are you talking about their points of presence? I see they have one in my city but no idea what it means in practice. I'm pretty sure that POP is unlikely to be at my local exchange. I expect to go via the Openreach network to Zen's network but do I really care as long as I get my expected speeds and a reliable service?

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Are you talking about their points of presence? I see they have one in my city but no idea what it means in practice. I'm pretty sure that POP is unlikely to be at my local exchange. I expect to go via the Openreach network to Zen's network but do I really care as long as I get my expected speeds and a reliable service?

Zen produced a Google map of their PoPs that identifies the exchanges. I'm not sure if they plan to update the underlying data feed if they roll out further PoPs, but this map used to be available via their web site until they started to use the more abstract map currently on the Zen web site.


All FTTx traffic starts off over the BT Openreach network in your local area, and travels over that network to the GEA-FTTx handover node. The handover node is often at your local exchange, but the FTTx network in some areas runs back to a handover node at a nearby larger exchange.


If Zen have a PoP at the handover node for your FTTx connection, the traffic goes from the BT Openreach network to the Zen network via the PoP. Existing fibre customers were migrated to this system if it was available in their area.

If Zen do not have the necessary presence at the handover node, Zen use BT Wholesale WBMC for backhaul to the Zen network. The price is the same irrespective. This is how I'm connected to Zen, and I've never noticed any contention or latency spikes on my Zen FTTC connection apart from the three recent evenings with the aforementioned 'volcano' fault due to a defective link in the BT Wholesale network.

The 'View Line Data' option in the customer portal indicates if your connection is routed via WBMC.


Zen have indicated they may use the MSANs at their PoPs for LLU ADSL2+, but no further details have been announced. All ADSL2+ customers are currently connected to the Zen network via BT Wholesale apart from those at the four (I believe) exchanges on the legacy Zen LLU network.

If you can afford it, and the bandwidth caps are enough for you (unlimited on the new fibre packages), I could only recommend Zen. Excellent service and support.

If your budget is limited, or you're a heavy ADSL users, then PlusNet looks like an attractive alternative, however I've not been with them in years. The traffic management, though well explained, still doesn't sit well with me.

No getting away from the 12mo contract for FTTC with any ISP I don't believe, as this is imposed on the ISP by BT.

In reply to a post by din100:

I use Zen mainly their contract length is shorter and a good overall ISP. They are independent isp where plus net is owned by BT group.

What happened with your iPlayer buffering issue? You say you didn't have buffering when on Be but did with BT Fibre. Any noticeable difference with this (or anything else) between BT and Zen fibre?

Just to add, I've been a Zen customer for around 10 years now - always have had great uptime. Been very happy with the service. The only thing that might move me away is the lack of Fibre to my cabinet and the current 100gb monthly limit on ADSL.

Still holding out that a few hundred of us locals contacting Openreach,MP and local councillors (one of whom is up for election next year!) might do something.

Zen have been really good over the last years I've used them and we only use them for work but I'm finding their price (£45 per month) hard to justify over £22.50 with PlusNet as I'd save £270 per year by moving.

Having a long hard think over the weekend but will probably get Mac code and move.

In reply to a post by MartinBen:

Zen have been really good over the last years I've used them and we only use them for work but I'm finding their price (£45 per month) hard to justify over £22.50 with PlusNet as I'd save £270 per year by moving.

Having a long hard think over the weekend but will probably get Mac code and move.

j

Like for like fibre the difference is £10 but complicated by Plusnet's special offers and pre payment for line rental.

You could just about get 2 broadband services for that price, well you could not, as you would need to pay an extra £15 for another phone line.

You just need to look for a service that has all of the options that you want and then, if you can afford or want to pay the price, then that's the one for you. Most are now commodity, with little or no difference between them. They just work.

In reply to a post by MartinBen:

Zen have been really good over the last years I've used them and we only use them for work but I'm finding their price (£45 per month) hard to justify over £22.50 with PlusNet as I'd save £270 per year by moving.

What service(s) do you current have with Zen, and what service(s) are you looking to take from PlusNet.

£22.50 is PlusNet's monthly charge for unlimited fibre broadband, assuming, like the majority of people, that you're in a PlusNet "low cost" area. The same service can be had from Zen for £35.40/month for Fibre Unlimited 2 without Zen line rental, or £30/month for Fibre Unlimited 2 with Zen rental at £15.44. Zen's FTTC minimum contract period for FTTC is 12 months, whilst PlusNet's is 18 months.


Zen's ADSL pricing may well be revisited within the next few months, as it has been a while since those products were refreshed.

Currently on Zen Fibre Pro

The PlusNet one I'm looking at is called Unlimited Fibre Broadband at £22.49/month

I could not see any option on Zen's website to stay with them on a broadband only setup as they all include phone line which I dont need/want.

If they offered a broadband only package then I might reconsider - if they do have one they keep it very well hidden.

"There is a premium charge of £4.50 (£5.40 inc VAT) for taking Fibre only" http://www.zen.co.uk/blog/fibre-phone-packages-quest... and you will have to take a new 12 months minimum term for Unlimited Fibre 2

As 4M2 says, Zen Unlimited Fibre 2 is £35.40 per month (including VAT) if taken 'broadband only'. If you change to this or any of the other new tariffs, you make a new 12 month commitment to Zen.

Existing customers wanting to change tariff need to call Zen sales. As you get Unlimited Fibre 2 'broadband only' for the old Fibre Active price, it's a considerable saving.

So Zen Unlimited is £35.40 per month but PlusNet unlimited is £22.49 per month so just under £13 per month cheaper - or £155 cheaper per year.

So yes, Zen may offer a slightly cheaper package than the £45/month I'm currently paying but still considerably more that other providers.

Don't forget that with Plusnet there is a £50 activation fee for "broadband only" and it is on an 18 month minimum term...also Plusnet broadband costs more than that advertised if one is not in a "low cost area", i.e. £29.49 for unlimited fibre.

Edited by 4M2 (Sun 13-Oct-13 14:49:07)

£10 month is pretty much nothing.

I know converting it to an annual figure is done to try and justify it as some large amount of money, but in reality compared to what you probably spend on food, drinks, petrol, gas, electric its not much and I am confused as you started of stating you are happy with zen the service is really good then say you cant find a reason to pay more, so the fact the service is very good for you is no such reason?.

Why dont you just say you are jumping on the "pay as least as possible for broadband as possible" wagon and be done with it

Putting it another way, you could take Zen's unlimited service, reduce the premium you currently pay over PlusNet by around 40%, enter into a 12 month commitment rather than the 18 months PlusNet demands, and avoid any new activation charges - and you still want to leave Zen.

It's up to you. Zen are never going to match PlusNet on price - I explained the differences in philosophy in my earlier post. If you want the advantages of Zen's service, you need to pay a modest price premium for it.

i moved from zen to sky due to service issues with pings and the fact zen seemed to be blaming BT nothing they could do etc, strange they have since changed policy and will now challenge bt however my experience with sky has only been positive i dl at 75-78 MBs never changes up loads at 16-18 again rock solid and my pings are faster and have been since day 1, i wouldnt discount sky tbh i did for a few years and have now realised i paid over the odds for not much else, on ADSL i would say Zen is safer but on fibre nah no way.

I moved from Zen to Vivaciti. My line is capable of 16.4 mbit download and the slowest download speed I have seen on Vivaciti is around 10 mbit (hourly testing). When I was on Zen on the Max Product I was quite often down to 1 mbit, no use for streaming. Having said that recently within the last few days Daisy must have increased capacity somewhere as I am getting solid 16.4 mbit on hourly testing. Just waiting for Fibre now.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

i moved from zen to sky due to service issues with pings and the fact zen seemed to be blaming BT nothing they could do etc, strange they have since changed policy and will now challenge bt however my experience with sky has only been positive i dl at 75-78 MBs never changes up loads at 16-18 again rock solid and my pings are faster and have been since day 1, i wouldnt discount sky tbh i did for a few years and have now realised i paid over the odds for not much else, on ADSL i would say Zen is safer but on fibre nah no way.

Issues with pings? ping is a program that tests round-trip time.

Not only do I dislike the colloquial use of 'ping' instead of 'latency' or 'round-trip time', as ping does not describe the measurement in question, you also fail to explain the issue you had. Was the problem with variable RTT (i.e. jitter) or excessive RTT to your chosen server(s), and which hop(s) on a traceroute were affected?


Zen over BT Wholesale is constrained by the internal architecture of the BT Wholesale network - this is an unavoidable consequence of using third-party backhaul. Zen have their own presence in 200 exchanges now - hopefully the number will grow over time. At the moment, Zen's own backhaul is used for FTTx only, though Phil Long has indicated an intention to provide ADSL2+ over this system in the future.



Sky are a perfectly good choice - but from a very different philosophical basis to Zen. If you want inexpensive no-frills connectivity with a bare minimum of technical support, Sky may well be a good choice. I doubt you'd get Sky to engage in a discussion about the finer points of their network engineering if you weren't happy with the service they were providing. Sky's network architecture and, on ADSL2+, their MSAN parameters are different to all their competitors - on some lines they will provide a faster and/or lower latency connection and on some they won't.

I've never understood tribalism when it comes to ISPs or any other communications or IT product. I will recommend services I use that I am happy with, but recognise that there are good alternatives, and that nobody else will balance the various factors in exactly the way I do.


The original question asked was "is Zen good enough to justify the price premium over PlusNet?". The only answer is "it depends on how you weigh the factors".

try the search button and all will be revealed, ping latency whatever its a measurement of round trip time to and from a server which is affected by many things including peer routing and contention, on Zens fibre although i live within 100 meters of my cabinet, had a brand new line and never a connection issue my ping's went from a reasonable 20 ms to my game server to 45+ almost overnight, turns out the interleaving had been activated on my line and it would have cost to have it reset, i maintained interleaving should never have been added but heels dug in and the eventual result was i left Zen, it seems they have now got steps in place to resolve those issues so perhaps something has worked, my point is i am still getting the lower ping's from sky i l play on a NL server and have 20-24ms ping and 4 less hops to get there UK servers its 16ms ping my DLs never slow nor do my ULs and i can use the connection however the hell i want no limits at all, i did 1.4 TBs last Month with watching on Demand DLs and not a squeak all for less than i paid Zen, i was a Zen customer for several years on ADSL and it was good but service did start to drop off as accountability seemed to drop off with the emphasis on the customer swapping routers etc before any resolution and it always seemed as if BT had to get involved and would charge if misdiagnosed, so based on my experience i replied to the OP no tribalism just a response i don't care who supplies my service as long as i get what i want from it and i am happy to pay the price required for it as well. anyway do a search the evidence is all there in black and white.

I know grammar comments are bad form - but please try some full stops and paragraph breaks. Your posts are very hard to read.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

try the search button and all will be revealed

I don't need to. As I stated in my earlier post, my issue was with the colloquial use of 'ping'. 'Ping' is the program used to measure latency / round-trip time - the name is an allusion to sonar and has been ascribed the disputed backronym of 'Packet InterNet Groper'. The quantity being measured is latency or round-trip time, not, I argue, "a ping".

In reply to a post by cssuk:

ping latency whatever its a measurement of round trip time to and from a server which is affected by many things including peer routing

Not really in the case you go on to talk about, which is first hop latency. OK - there are hidden steps within the backhaul network you can't see on most ISPs' systems (as the traffic is encapsulated in a tunneling protocol such as L2TP), but the routing between your router's WAN interface and the ISP's BRAS is likely to be constant no matter what the ultimate destination of the traffic.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

and contention

It's possible to see contention effects on first hop latency, but this is often less of an effect than bandwidth saturation on your own connection. Upstream saturation is a particular issue for ADSL, as the relatively narrow upstream is easy to drive into saturation.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

on Zens fibre although i live within 100 meters of my cabinet, had a brand new line and never a connection issue my ping's went from a reasonable 20 ms to my game server to 45+ almost overnight, turns out the interleaving had been activated on my line and it would have cost to have it reset, i maintained interleaving should never have been added but heels dug in and the eventual result was i left Zen, it seems they have now got steps in place to resolve those issues so perhaps something has worked, my point is i am still getting the lower ping's from sky

It makes no difference whether you're on Zen, Sky or any other ISP using the BT Openreach FTTC platform - they are all affected by the BT Openreach DLM equally. The only control the ISP has over DLM is to select one of three trade-offs between speed and stability.

It is likely there was some sort of one-off issue affecting your line when you were with Zen - maybe a thunderstorm. The FTTC DLM tends to back off relatively quickly, stepping down impulse noise protection and interleaving when it is no longer needed over a period of a few days to a few weeks. The only way to get an immediate reset is to pay for an engineer visit - but if you do that and the issue remains, the interleaving will go straight back on.


It is serendipity that you haven't had the issue with Sky - but if it happened with Zen, it might happen with Sky. Such are the perils of putting a high speed signal over a single twisted pair of wires.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

i l play on a NL server and have 20-24ms ping and 4 less hops to get there UK servers its 16ms ping

The number of hops shown on a traceroute or similar is completely irrelevant, not least as there may be additional steps that do not show up on traceroute.

I'm glad you found a solution that offers you the latency and jitter you desire to the servers you are interested in.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

my DLs never slow nor do my ULs and i can use the connection however the hell i want no limits at all, i did 1.4 TBs last Month with watching on Demand DLs and not a squeak all for less than i paid Zen,

Your connection will inevitably slow if you attempt to move enough traffic through it, as it has a finite speed. Moreover, at FTTC speeds, the limiting factor on data transfer speeds is often the far end, not your connection.

The latest Zen FTTC packages include unlimited options. New ADSL2+ packages cannot be too far away and I expect those to include unlimited options, too.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

i was a Zen customer for several years on ADSL and it was good but service did start to drop off as accountability seemed to drop off with the emphasis on the customer swapping routers etc before any resolution and it always seemed as if BT had to get involved and would charge if misdiagnosed,

I suspect what you perceived to be a change in Zen's approach was BT Openreach becoming more likely to levy a visit charge if no network side fault was found or the line performed within specification. Inevitably against that background, all ISPs will advise their customers to take straightforward steps to minimise the chance of being charged.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

so based on my experience i replied to the OP no tribalism just a response i don't care who supplies my service as long as i get what i want from it and i am happy to pay the price required for it as well.

As I said in my earlier reply, Sky do all you want for a low price - which makes them the right choice for you.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

anyway do a search the evidence is all there in black and white.

You seem to be assuming there's one right answer to "what is the best ISP?", and that you can Google for it. As I said in my earlier response, the answer depends on what factors matter to you and the weight you attach to them. Sky is no use if you want static IP, for instance (I know they're working on a static IP solution for Be customers, but it's not something you can buy today).

In reply to a post by David_W:

It is likely there was some sort of one-off issue affecting your line when you were with Zen - maybe a thunderstorm. The FTTC DLM tends to back off relatively quickly, stepping down impulse noise protection and interleaving when it is no longer needed over a period of a few days to a few weeks. The only way to get an immediate reset is to pay for an engineer visit - but if you do that and the issue remains, the interleaving will go straight back on.

I had a 'one-off' event a couple of weeks ago when I was away from home. I suspect that a local thunderstorm resulted in interleaving being switched on. The cumulative effect of this was a drop in downstream speed of 12Mbps and downstream INP of 3. Two weeks later, and almost to the minute, my box re-synched and I now have my usual FTTC speeds. Clearly, this situation was outwith any ISP's control.

Edited by lexden16 (Fri 18-Oct-13 09:01:25)

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by cssuk:

on Zens fibre although i live within 100 meters of my cabinet, had a brand new line and never a connection issue my ping's went from a reasonable 20 ms to my game server to 45+ almost overnight, turns out the interleaving had been activated on my line and it would have cost to have it reset, i maintained interleaving should never have been added but heels dug in and the eventual result was i left Zen, it seems they have now got steps in place to resolve those issues so perhaps something has worked, my point is i am still getting the lower ping's from sky

It makes no difference whether you're on Zen, Sky or any other ISP using the BT Openreach FTTC platform - they are all affected by the BT Openreach DLM equally. The only control the ISP has over DLM is to select one of three trade-offs between speed and stability.

I thought I'd clarify what we discovered after this event. It is covered elsewhere in this forum, as it was the outcome of some comments here which led to us discovering an error in our provisioning on services linked to the POPs we use to provide FTTC via Openreach, without Wholesale.

Essentially during our investigations of cssuk's issue we saw the service was on "standard" which - on Wholesale - was the "best" profile for the situation. Wholesale translate "standard" to Openreach's "speed" (so the profile names match what they use for ADSL Max). When he was moved to one of our POPs the profile we ordered remained "standard" - however without Wholesale in the loop "standard" wasn't translated to "speed" anymore.

It was an oversight in our creation of services for those POPs - which I did uncover but too late to be of benefit here. As all of our systems and training expected "standard" to translate to "speed" there appeared to be no options available to us to resolve the issue without the chargeable visit; and as the line would have remained on Openreach's "standard" profile, not "speed", the outcome would have been as described.

It is something that's been addressed now - so all services are ordered on "Speed" if they're from Openreach and "Standard" from Wholesale. It's regrettable that we didn't spot this sooner to help cssuk, and I can only apologise for that.

In reply to a post by David_W:

I suspect what you perceived to be a change in Zen's approach was BT Openreach becoming more likely to levy a visit charge if no network side fault was found or the line performed within specification. Inevitably against that background, all ISPs will advise their customers to take straightforward steps to minimise the chance of being charged.

Wholesale and Openreach do pass on charges far more frequently then they have historically; which we in turn pass on to customers so we are keen to ensure that this doesn't happen and we have a strong case to dispute them if it does. Additionally our data shows that the vast majority of issues are solved through customer-premises diagnostics. So the reasons are twofold; to minimise the risk of charges and to deliver the quickest fix for most issues.

ta,
Phil.

Edited by deleted (Fri 18-Oct-13 10:01:56)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

£10 month is pretty much nothing.

Why dont you just say you are jumping on the "pay as least as possible for broadband as possible" wagon and be done with it

Well actually it is not all about cost although a £22.50 per month saving is not to be sniffed at.

Anyways had a chat with Zen today and found they do an Unlimited Fibre option with no phone requirement for £35 a month - still dearer than PlusNet - but I decided to stay with Zen and just move to that new contract.

Only a little more expensive than Plusnet for anyone outside a Plusnet "low cost area", i.e. £29.49 + £50 activation for Plusnet unlimited fibre "broadband only" 18 month contract v £35.40 + free activation for Zen Unlimited Fibre 2 "broadband only" 12 month contract

Edited by 4M2 (Fri 18-Oct-13 20:06:29)

i wont even bother with the grammar the post was made via phone,anyway as you will see from phils response there was an issue with the way Zen had ordered my line, there were no issues before this happened apart from an outage on Zens part if i recall but i may be wrong.

I run a Games server in NL and we ass a clan have done so for the last 8 years, it is among the most populated by traffic within the EU so for us we have to balance the needs of all players as we get connections literally from all over the World, when i have a player from the USA able to connect at a lower latency than me i figure there is an issue.

The reason for my anger and eventual migration from Zen was the reluctance from Zen to get involved with the issue and do something it seemed they wanted to pass the buck to an external supplier ie BT/Open reach whatever rather than agree there was an issue which i plainly demonstrated with before and after traces, and then propose a solution rather than it will eventually drop off we don't know when but it will, i am a competitive gamer ping is everything and yes up-speed is more important as is stability, i was getting spikes and warping on a 75Mb line!

Clearly Zen may well have learnt from this episode, but for me it was the final straw, if you search my posts on this forum you will see a previous issue with ADSL where i was forced to replace my router before Zen would get involved or the terrorist Open reach would once again charge this is despite the fact the fault occurred after an outage and a lift and shift ordered by Zen, but that's another issue, on the 1 occasion i have had to deal with Skys Tech people they were very quick to respond, the call was free and the English based 2nd line knew exactly what he was talking about and resolved it.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

The reason for my anger and eventual migration from Zen was the reluctance from Zen to get involved with the issue and do something it seemed they wanted to pass the buck to an external supplier ie BT/Open reach whatever rather than agree there was an issue which i plainly demonstrated with before and after traces, and then propose a solution rather than it will eventually drop off we don't know when but it will, i am a competitive gamer ping is everything and yes up-speed is more important as is stability, i was getting spikes and warping on a 75Mb line!

As I said in my earlier reply, all ISPs using the BT Openreach FTTC platform are subject to the same DLM system.


Phil has explained your case revealed the difference in DLM profile names between BT Openreach and BT Wholesale misled Zen into provisioning the lines that were moved from the BT Wholesale based network to the Zen network on the wrong DLM option. This meant Zen switched your line onto the middle of the three DLM profiles, rather than leaving it on the "speed" option that they'd intended.

As Zen mistakenly thought they'd already selected the "speed" DLM profile, the only helpful act within their power for your issue, all they could do was to involve BT Openreach. That's not "passing the buck" (as you describe it) - when dealing with issues arising from third-party equipment, Zen or any other ISP has to pass the issue over to the third party once they've exhausted any delegated options.

Had you allowed Zen to move you back to the speed DLM profile, you would have got the same performance from the BT Openreach FTTC equipment that you had enjoyed on Zen before being migrated from BT Wholesale backhaul to Zen's own backhaul, which is presumably the same performance you now have with Sky (implying they also use the speed profile). It was a provisioning mistake by Zen that they have acknowledged and fixed.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

Clearly Zen may well have learnt from this episode, but for me it was the final straw,

It was a one-off provisioning issue when Zen migrated customers to the new Zen MPLS network. Zen have now fixed their internal systems so this won't affect anyone else. Of course, it was your right to migrate away based on the service issues you experienced, and I'm glad you're content with your new ISP.

The underlying position remains as I said. The BT Openreach FTTC DLM works the same for customers of all ISPs. The only control the ISP has over the DLM is to selecting one of three DLM profiles, which are different trade-offs between speed and stability.

This episode did not change the balance of power between the ISPs and BT Openreach on DLM issues. It remains the case that other than selecting the profile, all the ISP can do is pass the issue to BT Openreach, and a full DLM reset needs an engineer visit.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

if you search my posts on this forum you will see a previous issue with ADSL where i was forced to replace my router before Zen would get involved or the terrorist Open reach would once again charge this is despite the fact the fault occurred after an outage and a lift and shift ordered by Zen, but that's another issue,

As both Phil and I said, BT Openreach and Wholesale are both more ready to raise visit charges than in the past. ISPs try to do what they can to exclude issues at the user's end, which an engineer wouldn't resolve but would raise a charge for. No customer is going to be happy if they wait in for an engineer that doesn't fix their issue, then they get a bill of around £100.


If you'd already had a lift and shift, that would tend to exclude many possible network side issues, which suggested the issue is more likely to be at your end. If you were certain your router wasn't to blame, you could have insisted on a visit. However, as basic routers are so inexpensive and may just solve the issue, I can see why Zen would suggest trying a different router first.

When I was on ADSL, I always had a spare router on hand just in case. I still have that spare router, actually - not that I have an ADSL line to use it on! What I did discover is two examples of the same router from the same batch can perform quite differently - my live router managed some 800 kbit/s greater downstream sync speed than its sibling spare.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

on the 1 occasion i have had to deal with Skys Tech people they were very quick to respond, the call was free and the English based 2nd line knew exactly what he was talking about and resolved it.

As I said, Sky is clearly a good fit to your needs, and I'm delighted you've found an inexpensive service that meets your requirements.

My concern with cheaper providers is the variability of service. On the limited number of occasions I've had to deal with Zen technical support over the past ten years, I've always got straight through to someone with deep technical knowledge straight away, with no need to get through a script-reading first line stage. For me, the service I have received justifies the higher price.


Everyone has different experiences of the same service. It's always tempting when you face problems to go elsewhere. I'm glad that, in your case, you found the grass was greener.