In reply to a post by trillium:

Thanks j0hn83 - I guess I will try call them again and try to get through to someone who can confirm this!

I would definitely press the issue if that's the service you want.

I received a very helpful reply from Ajays, a member of Zen staff on these forums.
He's confirmed it's symmetrical and the reasons for the advertising the lower upstream rates.

Hi John, thanks for reaching out.

This is all linked to our obligations as a signatory of Ofcom's speeds code of practice.

Ofcom require Zen to advertise speeds based on the results of speeds tests run under a set of defined principles.

Along with TalkTalk, Zen are the only signatories using City Fibre's network.

Before we're allowed to advertise the increased upload speeds we need to connect and measure the speeds from a panel of test customers. The panel needs to be sufficiently large that it is statistically representative for each of the different speed packages we offer and so that it takes into account any differences between cities.

Our CPE doesn't have an Ofcom approved speed testing service built in, so we use SamKnows white boxes to gather the evidence we need to provide to Ofcom.

In the meantime the speed test data we have is based on Openreach FTTP. Hence the speeds you see on our website and that our sales teams are obliged to provide.

So, in summary, customer's upload speeds are not capped at the Openreach profile rates. But until we have the appropriate evidence to back clams of higher upload speeds, we are continuing to advertise a single set of profiles across both networks. Better to under promise and over deliver than the other way around.

I hope that all makes sense. And believe me it's quite frustrating that we can not shout about the higher upload speeds in the way we'd like to.

Best regards,

Andrew

Thanks j0hn83,

I've reached out to Ajays to see if he can connect me with someone in Sales who can help.

I would also like to thank you for posting this response.
City Fiber have just gone live where I am and I have been talking to Zen sales on the phone today who insisted it was capped to 100M up (even when I tried to suggest other ISPs were all offering 900/900) They failed to mention the "marketing" and ofcom stuff.

Zen were my preferred ISP and the above was putting me off somewhat - although to be fair, the lack of clarity or or inability to explain is also quite of putting so I'm still not sure if Zen is the right place for me - but at least I have a little more confidence in what I have read elsewhere!

Hi Philg,

I have placed an order with Zen following on from the above, I'll be sure to reply with my experience once my service goes live (engineers fitted the ONT today, but unfortunately I have some blocked ducting so I'm waiting a follow on appointment).

Cheers.

Thanks - that would be really useful!

Ended up not going with them as to move to them, CityFibre has no method of migration between ISPs, so would involve cancelling the Vodafone Cityfibre connection, waiting several days without broadband whilst it clears on their system, then order Zen and get the first available ‘install’ day.. it sounded ridiculous so had it escalated but got the same answer.

I did however sign up another family member with Zen and it is symmetrical, 900/900. Just they as mentioned above don’t have enough Ofcom data to claim otherwise.

Just another year and the new ‘one touch switch’ process comes into force from Ofcom:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/ofcom-...

However agreed, it’s pretty shambolic that CF don’t have a properly vetted/tested internal process to seamlessly switch between their own serving ISP’s now.

My most recent ISP swap on Openreach FTTP, I had a grand total of 12 seconds of downtime….

Edited by Pheasant (Mon 24-Jan-22 23:42:18)

This is both reasonable (in terms of Zen following the advertising rules) and at the same time silly (in terms of matters of fact).

IMHO, I can understand that Zen cannot advertise the service as symmetrical in a Sales context.
However if escalated to pre-sale support as a technical query it should then be ok to provide answers containing only factual statements and clarifications about how the service is implemented, since it is not a matter of opinion nor about averages of percentages of the existing customer base.

Edited by prlzx (Tue 25-Jan-22 00:24:29)

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

I received a very helpful reply from Ajays, a member of Zen staff on these forums.
He's confirmed it's symmetrical and the reasons for the advertising the lower upstream rates.

Hi John, thanks for reaching out.

This is all linked to our obligations as a signatory of Ofcom's speeds code of practice.

Ofcom require Zen to advertise speeds based on the results of speeds tests run under a set of defined principles.

Along with TalkTalk, Zen are the only signatories using City Fibre's network.

Before we're allowed to advertise the increased upload speeds we need to connect and measure the speeds from a panel of test customers. The panel needs to be sufficiently large that it is statistically representative for each of the different speed packages we offer and so that it takes into account any differences between cities.

Our CPE doesn't have an Ofcom approved speed testing service built in, so we use SamKnows white boxes to gather the evidence we need to provide to Ofcom.

In the meantime the speed test data we have is based on Openreach FTTP. Hence the speeds you see on our website and that our sales teams are obliged to provide.

So, in summary, customer's upload speeds are not capped at the Openreach profile rates. But until we have the appropriate evidence to back clams of higher upload speeds, we are continuing to advertise a single set of profiles across both networks. Better to under promise and over deliver than the other way around.

I hope that all makes sense. And believe me it's quite frustrating that we can not shout about the higher upload speeds in the way we'd like to.

Best regards,

Andrew

Ok thats good to know, shows the ofcom stuff is a bit flawed as well, I will edit my post in the other thread.