GEA vs WBMC

Is there any way to find out whether Zen are currently offering GEA (I.e. a direct backhaul link from Openreach's kit to Zen's) as opposed to WBMC (Openreach to BT Wholesale to Zen) for a given exchange (in particular, mine - ESPER, Perth)?

It doesn't seem to be one of the 200 exchanges with a direct Zen presence, but there are another 270 exchanges for which Openreach terminates the traffic on one of those 200, and I haven't yet found a list of where the NGA handover site is for each exchange, nor a list of the 470 exchanges where Zen use GEA directly as opposed to using WBMC.

(I'm on a WBMC service right now, but was bitten by a backhaul fault last year: it took BT SIX Openreach engineer visits before they finally spotted it was a bad 10G fibre link or port on their Wholesale backbone link in Edinburgh. Being a bit less reliant on that stuff in future would feel nice!)

I do not think that Zen publish this information but if you give them a call they will probably tell you if your exchange is GEA or not.

Not sure if the exchange information page of sam knows would help https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search
e.g. maybe the " LLU operator presence " section represents that ? (a guess on my behalf though)

Not in Perth!

Perth's exchange don't have Zen's PoP (LLU) it does have TalkTalk, Sky or C&W though.

In reply to a post by JamesS88:

It doesn't seem to be one of the 200 exchanges with a direct Zen presence, but there are another 270 exchanges for which Openreach terminates the traffic on one of those 200, and I haven't yet found a list of where the NGA handover site is for each exchange, nor a list of the 470 exchanges where Zen use GEA directly as opposed to using WBMC.

Perth is a parent exchange.

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

I do not think that Zen publish this information but if you give them a call they will probably tell you if your exchange is GEA or not.

Not sure if the exchange information page of sam knows would help https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search
e.g. maybe the " LLU operator presence " section represents that ? (a guess on my behalf though)

I believe you are right.

I don't have Zen at my exchange but I do have a Cardiff based company called Spectrum LLU and they say they can use their network to provide the FTTC. I have always thought the LLU backhaul was big enough to cope with it. I would like to think I was right there it must be standard GB links?

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

I do not think that Zen publish this information but if you give them a call they will probably tell you if your exchange is GEA or not.

Agreed. I noted that on my previous re-grade (downgrade from UF2 to UF1), there was a step present in the order status which checked if GEA was available. I'm presuming that if it was, I would have also been moved from WBMC to GEA during the re-grade. Turns out there wasn't, so I'm still on WBMC.

In the Zen customer portal, go to My Services > Broadband & SDSL > View Line Data.

I see:

Your current maximum download speed is 71543Kbps.
Your current line technology is WBMC.

(It's just above the line rate data box)

Yup, I know about that, and mine says (and always has said) WBMC. Was just pointing out that Zen appear to check the availability of GEA during re-grades, that was all.

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

I believe you are right.

I don't have Zen at my exchange but I do have a Cardiff based company called Spectrum LLU and they say they can use their network to provide the FTTC. I have always thought the LLU backhaul was big enough to cope with it. I would like to think I was right there it must be standard GB links?

Sadly, Zen sales got back to me to say I'd be stuck with WBMC if I switch - although C&W have a presence, and Zen apparently use C&W backhaul, it seems that doesn't extend to them using C&W's backhaul here. I'm also curious why they downgraded back from WBC (where they at least 'owned' the traffic from the serving BT POP onwards, instead of relying on BT's national network all the way) - does anyone have any ideas?

Between the bad experiences with WBMC in the past and IPv6 still being a "trial" for now, I think I'll stay put with A&A a bit longer.

(Aside from the unlimited tariff, Zen's appeal for me was having their own backhaul network and peering, plus an Akamai node, closer to me than London; as it stands, all my traffic gets shipped all the way to London as PPPoE, then over peering or transit from there; being stuck with WBMC would seem to negate all of that except for having an on-network Akamai node.)

AFAICS Zen haven't stopped investing in backhaul yet though, have they? Which might at least hold out the prospect of more exchanges being added to the list in future...

You know I really don't know about that. I assume they have not though. I came from A&A and will be going back there but not because of the Ipv6 that I couldn't get to work with Zen. I don't personally see any benefit to it so far.

I have C&W at my exchange but I believe I am on the basic WBMC and it works fine for me. Solid 24/7 and never a problem with how much I use (was 10.5TB last month) I'm on 80/20 sync and get 76/18 through.

I am going back to A&A because I want to spend more and if I am going to spend more then I might as well go with them. They have a product which Zen can't match but most people don't want to pay for. I was only on A&A for ADSL (and then went to Zen for ADSL and then FTTC)

Anyhoo my point is that I can't really complain about WBMC as it's working fine for me. And when I move I will drop to 74/16 but that's still not a problem.