900 down/220 up from Zen?

I've been with Zen for a very long time, only leaving when BeThere offered something different but came back again.

Are Zen going to offer the 1Gb package soon? It seems odd that BT is ahead....

I asked about the 900/110 residential package on Kitz and was told by CarlT (not a representative of Zen but a knowledgeable person who posts on here too):

"They were planning end of this month or early next. No idea now."

Edited by alexatkin (Fri 24-Apr-20 23:24:04)

More like May/June now due to some virus knocking around.

Thanks for the name drop, Alex!

I heard the lockdown could be extents to six months!

Would not surprise me at all. Whilever a vocal minority are not taking it seriously, its not going to improve.

Not sure it will impact this timeline though, as its going to be more about making sure the infrastructure is there to support it and that work should be ongoing.

New FTTP connections will be a problem, but regrades to faster service should be largely unaffected.

I'm still hopeful of it being soon, I do check Zen's website every so often.

If this ISP Review article is anything to go by it sounds like Zen, and any other ISP that use BT Wholesale (even just for some parts of the UK), will have some commercial hurdles to get over if they want to offer a service that competes with the BT residential 1Gb service

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/03/bt-who...

In reply to a post by alexatkin:

Would not surprise me at all. Whilever a vocal minority are not taking it seriously, its not going to improve.

Not sure it will impact this timeline though, as its going to be more about making sure the infrastructure is there to support it and that work should be ongoing.

New FTTP connections will be a problem, but regrades to faster service should be largely unaffected.

To quarantine the sick is necessary but quarantining the healthy is tyranny

In reply to a post by tommy45:

To quarantine the sick is necessary but quarantining the healthy is tyranny

Valid point. Presuming you are referring to the current state, could you let us know how you sort the ill from the healthy, please.

In reply to a post by JakeDog:

If this ISP Review article is anything to go by it sounds like Zen, and any other ISP that use BT Wholesale (even just for some parts of the UK), will have some commercial hurdles to get over if they want to offer a service that competes with the BT residential 1Gb service

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/03/bt-who...

That ISPreview report is quite disconcerting. Not just for Zen. Stinks of predatory pricing.

Customer services told me that it was due to come soon, and as mentioned previously was delayed due to the outbreak.

I was a bit surprised to find out they don't offer any kind of voip for their fttp services either. Just normal phone lines which then obviously work out more expensive.

Not sure if that's normal for ISP's or not. My FTTP line is due soon so don't really know enough about voice services via it.

In reply to a post by zebb_edi:

Customer services told me that it was due to come soon, and as mentioned previously was delayed due to the outbreak.

I was a bit surprised to find out they don't offer any kind of voip for their fttp services either. Just normal phone lines which then obviously work out more expensive.

Not sure if that's normal for ISP's or not. My FTTP line is due soon so don't really know enough about voice services via it.

Zen definitely have a residential VOIP service. It’s strange it seems to have vanished from their website. Zen Talk or something.

I've just noticed this in my ZEN Portal :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Work in progress, since 19/05/2020 04:46

Waiting for regrade - IN PROGRESS FOR 6 DAYS
Zen FTTP GEA Migration
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm currently on ZEN FTTP 80/20 - Any idea what it is and could it be related?

In reply to a post by Angel_Rex:

I've just noticed this in my ZEN Portal :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Work in progress, since 19/05/2020 04:46

Waiting for regrade - IN PROGRESS FOR 6 DAYS
Zen FTTP GEA Migration
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm currently on ZEN FTTP 80/20 - Any idea what it is and could it be related?

Migration from BTW FTTP to Zen GEA FFTTP would be my guess.

I didn't realise there was a difference - I've been with Zen since 2018 on FTTP.

Is the GEA better or worse than BTW? Currently I get 4ms ping to bbc.co.uk and tracert is 6 hops.

I don't get any lag or buffering or jitter. Hopefully this stays the same or I shall have to consider moving :/

looked at BT and they are selling 900 service for same price zen are charging me 330 for

In reply to a post by Angel_Rex:

I didn't realise there was a difference - I've been with Zen since 2018 on FTTP.

Is the GEA better or worse than BTW? Currently I get 4ms ping to bbc.co.uk and tracert is 6 hops.

I don't get any lag or buffering or jitter. Hopefully this stays the same or I shall have to consider moving :/

A bit of a mixup there .

All FTTP is Openreach. Not BTW, not Zen, not Sky or any other ISP. It goes from a fibre head-end exchange to underground aggregation points. From where it splits off and ultimately end up at the subscriber's premises.

At the fibre exchange all the fibre connections are connected over the appropriate Generic Ethernet Access (GEA) link cable to the required ISP's or wholesaler's backhaul. Each ISP or Wholesaler including BT Wholesale has its own GEA cables.

So .…

What jaydub is suggesting is that Zen are moving you from their BT Wholesale backhaul at the exchange, (which they pay BTW to route along with many others to one of a small number of handover nodes dotted around the country), to their own (probably newly installed) backhaul from the exchange. That costing them significantly less than getting BTW to carry it most of the way.

So your connection being "migrated" from an FTTP<>BTW GEA cable at the change to an FTTP<>ZEN GEA cable.

(Edit: Several clarification mods).
(Edit 2: Dammit LOL. I've just noticed the date-stamp of what I replied to ).

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 15-Jun-20 19:10:06)

Yes, but Zen have always been a premium ISP in that respect. Having said that, with FTTP I'm not sure that but makes a difference?

In reply to a post by Geordish:

In reply to a post by zebb_edi:

Customer services told me that it was due to come soon, and as mentioned previously was delayed due to the outbreak.

I was a bit surprised to find out they don't offer any kind of voip for their fttp services either. Just normal phone lines which then obviously work out more expensive.

Not sure if that's normal for ISP's or not. My FTTP line is due soon so don't really know enough about voice services via it.

Zen definitely have a residential VOIP service. It’s strange it seems to have vanished from their website. Zen Talk or something.

They do and I use it. But it is for outgoing calls only with a 1000 minutes free each month to 01/02/03 numbers.

I asked a couple of weeks ago and all they said was it's coming but no ETA but they'd let me know when it would be.

Curious to know the pricing as i am currently on their top residential 300/50 FTTP package which is £59.99.

According to ISPr, Zen have soft launched the 1 Gig & 1/2 Gig FTTP services, though nothing on their website just yet. Apparently the 1 Gig service is priced around £70/m. Might give them a caller later on to get more details.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/isp-ze...

Edit: prices confirmed

Fibre 500: £55/m on 2 year contract with £55 activation fee
Fibre 900: £70/m on 2 year contract with £55 activation fee

Above prices is for data only services, voice service (if req’d) is an extra £10/m

Also the fibre 900 is based on the Openreach 1000/115 tier, NOT on the 1000/220 one ( as per thread title)

Edited by deleted (Fri 10-Jul-20 09:09:46)

In reply to a post by Highland76:

Also the fibre 900 is based on the Openreach 1000/115 tier, NOT on the 1000/220 one ( as per thread title)

Er, daftish question but what does this mean? You'll only get "up to" 115, not 220? Or its not available in 1000/220 areas?

It means the upload profile has a maximum speed of 115 Mbps. There are no 1000/115 specific areas.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

In reply to a post by Highland76:

Also the fibre 900 is based on the Openreach 1000/115 tier, NOT on the 1000/220 one ( as per thread title)

Er, daftish question but what does this mean? You'll only get "up to" 115, not 220? Or its not available in 1000/220 areas?

Openreach sell 2 different Gigabit FTTP products to CPs - one with 115 upload and the other with 220 upload. Both are available to order at any property showing Gigabit availability on the dsl checker however the latter is considerably more expensive at wholesale level which is why the cheapest Gigabit packages come with the 115 upload. The cheapest 1000/220 service I know of is £200+ pm with Cerberus, though once BT Business release the same tier, this *should* be far cheaper - most likely < £150/m.

Spoke to Zen today and they offered me a 900 profile which I think was in the £60 p/m range. However, I have settled on their new 115 profile for £38.99 p/m. These have only been decided on Thursday past.

In reply to a post by Taaketa:

I have settled on their new 115 profile for £38.99 p/m.

A typo ("115") or something so new its never been seen before! FTTP not Gfast?

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

In reply to a post by Taaketa:

I have settled on their new 115 profile for £38.99 p/m.

A typo ("115") or something so new its never been seen before! FTTP not Gfast?

Don't think it is a typo - When I spoke with them, they said they have a new Full Fibre 1 service which is 115/20, and then they have the Fibre 500 for £55 and Fibre 900 services.

Just waiting on mine to activate - at present the tracking says "Manually place modify order with BT Wholesale - IN PROGRESS FOR 3 DAYS"

115Mbps is indeed a product that Openreach provide.

You can read all about the various profiles supported at their technical documentation here: https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/helpandsupport...

In reply to a post by Geordish:

115Mbps is indeed a product that Openreach provide.

You can read all about the various profiles supported at their technical documentation here: https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/helpandsupport...

So much choice. Too much choice! I'm sure they have a reason for having 110, 115 and 120 options.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/prici...

^^^
All of the FTTP speeds available and the OpenReach price for each.

ISP's are free to sell any tiers they wish.

My service regraded overnight, however speeds don't appear to be as consistent as those using BT Retail, I'm hitting peaks of about 110-120 upload (on the 900/110 service), but can't get higher than about 550 down, wired connection to a ER4 router (watching that CPU isn't getting saturated). Will try the Fritz router later on, but any ideas would be welcome.

Cheers

rob

Edited by robsdesk (Tue 14-Jul-20 11:03:48)

In reply to a post by Geordish:

In reply to a post by zebb_edi:

Customer services told me that it was due to come soon, and as mentioned previously was delayed due to the outbreak.

I was a bit surprised to find out they don't offer any kind of voip for their fttp services either. Just normal phone lines which then obviously work out more expensive.

Not sure if that's normal for ISP's or not. My FTTP line is due soon so don't really know enough about voice services via it.

Zen definitely have a residential VOIP service. It’s strange it seems to have vanished from their website. Zen Talk or something.

Got it myself but it's outgoing only with a CLID of your landline number. It cost £5.10 a month and comes with 1000 free minutes to 01/02/03 numbers. Can be configured into any SIP phone.

Just looking on the Zen site today I they are appearing for me. The FTTP services are:

35*(£34.99), 100(£38.99), 500(£55) & 900(£70) if you want a phone line add £10 to all packages.

VDSL with a Phone line still cheaper for the 38mb option. VDSL up to 80mb cheaper than the 100mb option if you're getting 75mb and don't mind the lack of the extra 25mb.

*called 35, but average speed is 38!

Edited by kebabselector (Wed 15-Jul-20 14:19:59)

I spoke to Zen this morning about my regrade issue, person I spoke to said there is a known problem with capping on their side with FTTP regrades, since then my upload is now 120, download still stuck at 300 so some progress.

I spoke to Zen yesterday and they were happy to regrade me from 300 to 500 even though my contract had only been running a few weeks. Does anyone know if the change shows up in the Zen customer portal (and if so where)? The guy I spoke to didn't seem completely sure what I was asking for at first.

Similar situation here. I’m using the fritzbox router and can get around 500 to 600Mbps on some decent Speedtest.net servers.
Fast.com tends to provide some better results but tends to go no higher than 800.

Is this not quite as good as other ISPs? I honestly was beginning to think that it was a combination of servers not being able to keep up and my ageing desktop pc. I tried downloading a large game on Steam but topped out at around 300Mbps as my cpu was getting hammered!

Spoke to them again today, now being raised as a fault with Openreach, on my line at least you can see the upload has been lifted but download is going no higher than 300mbps, did the usual three appointment times thing, hopefully when openreach get the issue reported they'll see it's a provisioning issue and resolve...

Openreach came out this morning, confirmed nothing wrong with the physical connection as you'd expect, but that it was clearly under spec. Openreach have a further fault open, Zen been in touch and will continue working on it tomorrow.

If anyone else is in this situation worth raising a case, certainly shouldn't be behaving in this way.

Another update on this, my service was migrated off the BT Wholesale service last month (unconnected to this regrade), I'm now being migrated back to that service, with the 900/115 service, sounds like a potential capacity issue.

In reply to a post by robsdesk:

Another update on this, my service was migrated off the BT Wholesale service last month (unconnected to this regrade), I'm now being migrated back to that service, with the 900/115 service, sounds like a potential capacity issue.

Or you're on an exchange where Zen don't have their own backhaul but purchase from someone else that doesn't offer that product wholesale.

So is anyone on the higher 900 package successfully receiving those kind of speeds? I've been following this thread with keen interest.

My DrayTek doesn't support speeds that high, so was thinking of replacing it with the FritzBox from zen but was hoping for others experience first.

Yep. All good.

Zen+BT

https://i.postimg.cc/C1qyfYkz/Fast-Test.png
https://i.postimg.cc/dtJXJGH7/Speeds.png

wow....you have both bonded or something?

What router area you using? Did you manage to get 900 using just the fritz and only zen?

Edited by zebb_edi (Fri 24-Jul-20 10:41:41)

In reply to a post by zebb_edi:

wow....you have both bonded or something?

What router area you using? Did you manage to get 900 using just the fritz and only zen?

Using pfsense. Haven't tried with the Fritz but can confirm the Zen service is delivering as it should be.

Did you manage to get this resolved? I have been regraded to Zen's Full Fibre 900 service today, and have not been able to get download speeds above 250 Mbps. I have got a case logged with Zen about this, and am waiting for them to get back to me.

Is that over wifi?

In reply to a post by tboorman:

Did you manage to get this resolved? I have been regraded to Zen's Full Fibre 900 service today, and have not been able to get download speeds above 250 Mbps. I have got a case logged with Zen about this, and am waiting for them to get back to me.

They're still progressing my regrade back to BT Wholesale, I think it got stuck with provisioning for a few days, being told about another week to get it done.

Are you seeing 120 on the upload, I do and about 300 down. They seem to know about the issue, took a few days after the openreach visit to get it moving.

My regrade was one that worked in the standard time frame.

Unfortunately what I have found is that the supplied fritz!box doesn't appear to be up to the job. I can get around 600ishMbps OK, but anything above that is very erratic.

To test, I connected up a Mikrotik Hex router and noticed a difference immediately.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/9845535549
Thats more like it!

Unfortunately I don't really like the Hex. Its... very complicated to set up and maintain, and it seems to cause some odd issues occasionally. I don't want odd issues when I'm still working from home full time!

I cannot fault the friz!box for reliability. And it's wifi performance is great (for it's spec. you cant pull more than around 500Mbps from its 2x2 80MHz connection, which is expected). I also use the built in DECT base station for VOIP (data only service).

I may contact them and ask them if they are considering supplying something more powerful that I can upgrade to.

I take it you're using the new one (don't remember the model but supplied when I upgraded), I'm using an edge router 4, tried the Fritz to see if it was any different but not for me.

Yes, those are around the speeds that I'm seeing. An Openreach engineer came last Thursday, and confirmed that my profile was set correctly, and that the light level reaching my ONT was fine, but agreed that I wasn't getting acceptable download speeds. Another Openreach engineer came today and did some tests while on the phone with someone from BT Wholesale using their test head. They were getting download speeds of around 500 Mbps with that, which supposedly is the fastest that they can achieve with it. The person from BT Wholesale said that he was going to log a ticket for 2nd line to investigate further.

That sounds familiar, worth following up with Zen if you've not already, the faults team seem to have a good handle on things.

Assuming the same issue as with me, I wonder when Zen will get a handle on this, sort of sounds like they may be unable to provide the higher download speeds.

I've followed up with Zen, and they've escalated it with Ooenreach, and have arranged for another engineer to visit on Monday.

I was not reassured by the person from Zen's fault team that the Openreach engineer spoke to yesterday. He said to him that if they can't resolve it, they'd just have to downgrade me to a package with a lower download speed...

I've noticed that I get varying download speeds reported, depending on which speed test site I use. These were all taken one after another on a wired connection with WiFi disabled on my router, and with the Internet security package on my laptop disabled:

fast.com - 700 Mbps download, 93 Mbps upload
speedtest.net - 250 Mbps download, 96 Mbps upload
thinkbroadband.com - 237 Mbps download, 93 Mbps upload
checker.ofcom.org.uk - 467 Mbps download, 91 Mbps upload
speedtest.btwholesale.com - 320 Mbps download, 210 Mbps upload

The traffic monitor on my router showed the maximum download speed during the above tests as 638 Mbps.

Edited by tboorman (Sun 09-Aug-20 13:26:32)

The Openreach engineer didn't turn up on Monday - he called me to say that there was nothing that they could do, and that it was a service provider issue. BT Wholesale have now rebuilt my circuit, but the download speeds are no better, so Zen have arranged for an Openreach engineer to visit next Monday - I'm not sure what he's going to be able to do though.

Are you consistently getting > 500 Mbps on fast.com? If so, then that suggests there’s nothing wrong with your download speeds and you have been correctly provisioned on the 1000/115 product, especially if openreach/btw have rebuilt your circuit. Worth remembering there’s very few testers out there which can cope with the full 900 Mbps, I certainly don’t see anywhere near that on the TBB tester but fast.com and the Xilo and Vodafone Ookla Speedtest.net servers regularly show 800+ Mbps.

I do not consistently get speeds above 500 Mbps on fast.com, and I have never seen speeds higher than 200 to 300 Mbps on either TBB or speedtest.net.

Cheers. I assume you’ve already done tests using a direct pc connection to ONT to rule out router issues?

Yes, and so have the two Openreach engineers that have been here.

My line was shifted back to a BT Wholesale based connection rather than Zen's own last week, I'm now seeing 900 down since the move, so certainly an issue there which has been resolved.

I have always been on BT Wholesale's backhaul. A third Openreach engineer has been today, and has confirmed again that there is no issue at my end, and said that it must be a backhaul issue. I am now waiting for Zen to investigate further.

The latest from Zen is:

We are starting to see a few of these higher speed services not achieving the higher ends of the advertised speeds. We're therefore collating data to analyse and look for common trends which we can then use to progress a wider issue with the supplier.

I've been going through the steps and it's finally been escalated to OR. Hopefully they'll be able to visit tomorrow.

I'm using a Raspi4 for some testing, should be good to about 800Mbps but I get the following:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Zen Internet Ltd (xx.xx.xx.xx)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Iomart (Maidenhead) [63.72 km]: 10.993 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 217.20 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 72.34 Mbit/s
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Zen Internet Ltd (xx.xx.xx.xx)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Iomart (Maidenhead) [63.72 km]: 10.426 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 457.25 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 81.65 Mbit/s
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Zen Internet Ltd (xx.xx.xx.xx)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Iomart (Maidenhead) [63.72 km]: 10.32 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 475.84 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 81.65 Mbit/s
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Zen Internet Ltd (xx.xx.xx.xx)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Iomart (Maidenhead) [63.72 km]: 9.985 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 435.95 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 86.46 Mbit/s

I'll probably switch out the router when I get this resolved.

I suspect that Openreach will not find a fault at your end. Zen are aware that a number of customers on the Full Fibre 500 and 900 products are experiencing poor download speeds. The update I had from them this afternoon is:

We're continuing to try and resolve throughput issues for our customers reporting issues on the FTTP 500 and FTTP 900 products.

We are trialling with a small sample of customers adding an elevated traffic status with BT Wholesale to see if that allows higher speeds to be met & also more consistently higher.

We do need a reasonable amount of time to try and fix this and can take a week or 2 to resolve this issue and will keep you updated accordingly.

In reply to a post by tboorman:

I suspect that Openreach will not find a fault at your end. Zen are aware that a number of customers on the Full Fibre 500 and 900 products are experiencing poor download speeds. The update I had from them this afternoon is:

We're continuing to try and resolve throughput issues for our customers reporting issues on the FTTP 500 and FTTP 900 products.

We are trialling with a small sample of customers adding an elevated traffic status with BT Wholesale to see if that allows higher speeds to be met & also more consistently higher.

We do need a reasonable amount of time to try and fix this and can take a week or 2 to resolve this issue and will keep you updated accordingly.

Any idea if the actions put in place resulted in a resolution?

Any idea if the actions put in place resulted in a resolution?

Turning on the elevated traffic status feature resolved it for me.

In reply to a post by tboorman:

Any idea if the actions put in place resulted in a resolution?

Turning on the elevated traffic status feature resolved it for me.

Many thanks. I wonder if they're doing this as a matter of course for new provisions now, or only enabling it if you complain...

As far as I know, the issue was only affecting certain customers. Whether they ever got to the bottom of it, I do not know.