Slow speed after GEA migration

Hi all

I'm on the 900 FTTP package which as far as I'm aware was working fine until about a week ago when it looks like a GEA migration happened.

At this time, my neighbour's connection (on Zen 500 FTTP) just stopped working and they're having a hell of a time trying to get things back up and running. The openreach engineer that attended said he had a load of them to visit that day and he wouldn't be able to fix any of them as they are failed migrations.

I seem to have escaped the issues, or so I thought, as mine reconnected immediately, but I have since noticed that my speed has been absolutely shocking at some times and at other times is very low (tests lower than 10Mbps download at times, regularly lower than 100Mbps).
Tests are both over wifi and ethernet and I have rebooted the router (the Zen supplied fritzbox).
Occasionally I do get a reasonable test result (over 600Mbps). Upload test results are always over 100Mbps which is totally fine.

Considering that before this, test results were always consistently above 800mbps over ethernet (and around 500-600 over wifi), this is definitely a big degradation in service.

I've seen posts about this on various forums online (including this one) both complaining about speed and failed migrations following these migrations. I wonder why these seem to be so problematic and how I'm best tackling this, as I'd like my previous performance back!

Any advice? Has anyone got their original performance back after this migration?

Edit:
Further testing I've just done... fast.com and speedtest.net servers all seem to max out at about 200Mbps download at the moment. This includes trying some previously known good speedtest.net servers (vodafone etc). Zen's own speedtest.net server is particularly poor giving only about 60Mbps!
Any server I've tried on Speedtest.net seems to be like this, except Cloudlfare, which happily zips along as if nothing is wrong... https://www.speedtest.net/result/12960718313
What's going on?
Voda test: https://www.speedtest.net/result/12957202599
Zen test: https://www.speedtest.net/result/12957582043
Speedtest.net auto selection: https://www.speedtest.net/result/12960697398

Edited by FakeJake (Tue 29-Mar-22 13:14:17)

“Migration” implies a move or change to your service - a new provider or a speed regrade on an existing service. A migration should only affect one customer. By the sounds of it, you have neither requested nor had any sort of “migration” but have noticed a distinct step change in your connection performance.

There may be a wider issue on the PON that serves both you and your neighbour. Not necessarily related to any migration per se.

Really the only way forward is for both of you and any other affected neighbours is to chase this up with your respective ISPs and ensure that it properly logged as a service affecting fault. This at least gets the timer ticking for any compensation and should get Openreach on the case.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

There may be a wider issue on the PON that serves both you and your neighbour. Not necessarily related to any migration per se.

My guess here would be a failed move from BT Wholesale backhaul to Zen's own network. It seems to be happening a fair bit.

Not covering themselves in glory are they! Advice remains: purely within Zen’s gift to resolve, be it backhaul changes, core network, access network…yada yada. The OP can just pile on the pressure

They really aren't!

I had a look at their pricing, at 330/50, 550/75 and 1000/110 Zen are only a few pounds under the likes of Cerberus or Aquiss.

I don't think there's any reason to choose Zen these days, if I had to rely on Openreach FTTP as a primary circuit Cerberus and Aquiss would be the front-runners. A&A are good but I'd struggle to justify the increased cost.

Hi, please feel free to PM me your details and I'll get the issue looked into as a matter or urgency.

If you've already logged the issue with our support team could you also let me know the case number?

We've recently unbundled some more exchanges allowing us to cut out the middle man (e.g. BT Wholesale). A GEA migration, is process of us migrating your connection away from the wholesaler's infrastructure directly to our own. This typically results in an improvement in service or at worst no change. You should never see the degradation you've described, so something would seem to have gone wrong, we'll get that sorted for you ASAP.

In reply to a post by ajays:

We've recently unbundled some more exchanges allowing us to cut out the middle man (e.g. BT Wholesale). A GEA migration, is process of us migrating your connection away from the wholesaler's infrastructure directly to our own.

Hi ajays

Out of interest do the Zen migrations team notify customers when this type of work is going to happen and what measures do they put in place to test and ensure customers are not negatively affected by their changes?

I don't believe I was informed. The only way I know something happened was after I checked the "My orders" section of my account. In there it shows an order for a GEA migration at a cost to me of £0.

Previous orders in there are when I've migrated to a different package (when the 900 package became available).

In reply to a post by ajays:

Hi, please feel free to PM me your details and I'll get the issue looked into as a matter or urgency.

If you've already logged the issue with our support team could you also let me know the case number?

We've recently unbundled some more exchanges allowing us to cut out the middle man (e.g. BT Wholesale). A GEA migration, is process of us migrating your connection away from the wholesaler's infrastructure directly to our own. This typically results in an improvement in service or at worst no change. You should never see the degradation you've described, so something would seem to have gone wrong, we'll get that sorted for you ASAP.

I'll send you a PM shortly. I haven't logged it yet as I was interested in what others may have offered as advice to get this fixed quickly.

Thank you for offering to get this looked into

PM sent.
I've also noticed that my IPv6 is gone... Hopefully this can be easily and quickly fixed