Zen Business - no SOGEA support?

Tried placing an order for another Zen Business fibre connection (FTTC). Order was rejected as 'no copper service available' and a message that it was a 'stop sell' exchange..

Provisioning couldn't help so put me through to sales, who dug deeper and discovered that only SOGEA services are available and Zen can't provide any business services on those. Tried to sell me residential, but the poorer SLA meant that was no good.

The Zen business checker still offers me FTTC services, but it doesn't check for SOGEA when querying the Openreach database - if it did, it wouldn't offer them...

Are you on the Mildenhall exchange?
WLR/PSTN isn't available on that particular exchange as it's the exchange Openreach are trialling the removal of WLR/PSTN.

Some providers aren't ready for all the upcoming changes particularly on some of the trial exchanges.

Nope, it's the Sudbury exchange.
It's just that Zen can't supply SOGEA business services yet and their ordering system doesn't cope with it either.

Ended up going with BT Business - got their service with Halo (the 4g backup) for less than Zen anyway.

j0hn83

There are now a lot of exchanges where you cannot order copper services, somewhere around 120 last time I looked. You can only order FTTP on these unless the premises cannot get FTTP for some reason. Therefore these are now SOGEA orders only as you cannot get PSTN on them at all.

But AIUI you can still order FTTC on SOGEA exchanges. With VOIP one way or another.

Yup just FTTC morphs into SOGEA in the 'single-order broadband ' world - you just canny call it FTTC any more as that implies there is two services: WLR + broadband.

Everyone with a copper line, technically gets broadband post Dec 2025 whether they want it or not. 😂

In reply to a post by kitcat:

j0hn83

There are now a lot of exchanges where you cannot order copper services, somewhere around 120 last time I looked. You can only order FTTP on these unless the premises cannot get FTTP for some reason.

I know. I don't see how that is relevant?
That only prevents copper services being ordered where FTTP exists.

Therefore these are now SOGEA orders only as you cannot get PSTN on them at all.

I don't think that's right.
I'm pretty sure you can still order WLR on an FTTP priority exchange if you have no FTTP.
If you do have FTTP on 1 of those exchanges then you can't order SOGEA, only FTTP.

The only exchange I'm aware of where you can order SOGEA but WLR isn't available is Mildenhall, which is why I asked the OP if that was their exchange.

This Talktalk image sums up the FTTP Priority process well
https://www.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/globalassets/fttp...

Edit: sudbury isn't on either list anyway. Zen seen to have their wires crossed.

Edited by j0hn83 (Tue 01-Feb-22 05:07:38)

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by kitcat:

You can only order FTTP on these unless the premises cannot get FTTP for some reason.

If you do have FTTP on 1 of those exchanges then you can't order SOGEA, only FTTP.

Here's an interesting edge case: what happens on an FTTP priority exchange when there is a 1-port ONT with active service, but there is no capacity at the CBT and the customer wants a second circuit. Can they order FTTC/G.fast or must they get the 1-port replaced with a 4-port?

I suspect the latter, and can't really think of any way to practically achieve that in areas where the option of swapping to 4-port isn't yet active.

Either 4-port Nokia (when it becomes finally available) or the customer is told to wait until either splitter / CBT capacity is increased.

No way they’re going to install a copper based circuit in an FTTP Priority exchange area *with* a property capable indeed already connected to FTTP.

Edit: this would be an extremely unlikely edge case - multiple FTTP connections (which are very rare anyway) and no ports/capacity in the FTTP network…

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 01-Feb-22 09:49:26)

Hi, feel free to PM me the details and I'll look into it for you.

As someone else has mentioned Mildenhall is the sole "SOGEA only" exchange. The other "stop sell" exchanges are FTTP priority exchanges. And the "stop sell" only applies at addresses with access to FTTP.