Warning - Zen still doing backhaul migrations

I have been very happy with Zen over the years, but I question their motivation for making unnecessary changes during these times when we are all so reliant on our internet connections to be able to work and socalise.

In my case they migrated me from a BTW backhaul to a TalkTalk Business backhaul on Thursday.

I only found out because of a worrying message on my Openreach line check which said that a "close order" had been placed on my line - which made me worry somewhat.

Luckily it went pretty smoothly; it caused a DLM reset and interleave was temporarily reapplied to my line.

Early days but the new TT Business backhaul has higher latency (even with fast path) and does seems more congested than the BTW backhaul I was on previously. I've had buffering for the first time in months - it went away immediately when I switched to Vodafone LTE ... and no, not my wifi; I have a Mikrotik set up that I optimise very carefully

Edited by chrisjam (Sat 28-Mar-20 17:53:24)

Not good for you, but it might have been unstoppable. They could well have had a contract signed a while ago, with an expensive cancellation charge and their BT contract on notice to terminate as well. Commercial contracts are very different from our Ofcom-regulated ones .

Fair point - perhaps they didn't have time to put a contractual variation in place.

I still like them - they're a good ISP, their support has usually been very good, and these are unprecedented times.

However for the benefit of others I'd say avoid Zen at the minute whilst they put through whatever network changes they are working on.

Edited by chrisjam (Sat 28-Mar-20 12:01:11)

Hi Chris, although this pandemic is unsettling, the world carries on spinning regardless. The governments intention is not to stop the economy, just stop social mixing, anything else should carry on as normal within the PHE guidelines.

In reply to a post by kev_445:

Hi Chris, although this pandemic is unsettling, the world carries on spinning regardless. The governments intention is not to stop the economy, just stop social mixing, anything else should carry on as normal within the PHE guidelines.

Of course. The point is that to do this many of us require a reliable internet connection.

In reply to a post by chrisjam:

Of course. The point is that to do this many of us require a reliable internet connection.

This may have been necessary to preserve the performance of your connection. If Zen have planned capacity based on moving x % of customers to the alternative platform they might be in trouble if they don't.

Extra WMBC capacity has a lead time which could be large depending on what's needed to deliver it.

Glad all is well.