Yeh I know, but is this just down to a problem with Zen backhaul - otherwise why are they now saying that Openreach want to come and run tests on Friday?

Seems to me there’s still some lingering finger of suspicion/blame on the Openreach part of the link.

So the only way to disprove that is to provision on a completely separate PON.

When I first upgraded from ZEN 80/20 FTTC to ZEN 900 FTTP on 7th October 2020 I had similar issues and I had months of absolute hassle, testing day and night and eventually messing up my PC, probably due to tiredness.

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/zen/t/4662160-re-d...

It was eventually resolved by either ZEN or by Openreach on 16th December 2020 when something somewhere was changed and after that it was good until around 20th March 2022.

Same sort of [censored] as before, slow speeds, web pages failing to resolve, etc.

Since 20th March 2022 I have been checking for known issues in my local area, carrying out router/ONT resets etc. and checking equipment but it is intermittently worse and I had wondered if a really heavy user had moved in locally.

I have been putting up with it like a Boiled Frog not realizing that changes had been made, (without my knowledge or consent), behind the scenes on 20th March 2022 via an Order that I was totally unaware of until I checked my Zen Account for something else.

Now visiting this Thinkbroadband Zen Forum I have found this thread and my months of hassle since 20th March 2022 are explained.

Last time it was escalated at ZEN and it was eventually corrected on 16th December 2020 when either ZEN or Openreach or both did something to my line but nobody will say what they did.

Yesterday, I emailed ZEN about the issues and I was sent a check the ONT and the stuff in the house advisory link, (as if I had not been doing that for the last three months).

These new issues, (which are the same as the old issues that were corrected 18 months ago), had started again on 20th March 2022 when this GEA change took place. - I do not know if Openreach switched me onto a [censored] connection as the ZEN GEA change took place of if the ZEN equipment is inferior.- It may be traffic management but I am not a heavy user. - Either way I am not happy and I have contacted ZEN Support again today and I am presently awaiting their follow up response.

I still like ZEN and I would prefer that ZEN sort this out quickly and that I can stay with them but I only have three months left on my contract and if it is not quickly resolved I will be looking elsewhere, probably BT but I have no idea to whom.

I have always looked upon ZEN as the Gold Standard ISP and 18th Months ago after they did eventually deal with the issues I reset my view back to Gold Standard but making sneaky behind the scenes changes is a line that had previously has had hassles in the past and was hassle free and was working well for 15 months is Stinking Fish.

I have asked them to put my line back as it was but their first response is that it is not their policy going forward.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/16558289206...

Regards,
Fido

Edited by Fido (Tue 21-Jun-22 22:21:47)

In reply to a post by Fido:

I have asked them to put my line back as it was but their first response is that it is not their policy going forward.

They did it for Steve (SteveBushell999) in this thread so they can do it for you.

Andrew (ajays) / Brandon (hazey_flakes) - This one is for you guys, no ducking the issue please.

Fido - you need to check/edit your post as you have transposed 2020 and 2022 in a couple of places.

Edited by deleted (Tue 21-Jun-22 21:41:18)

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by Fido:

I have asked them to put my line back as it was but their first response is that it is not their policy going forward.

They did it for Steve (SteveBushell999) in this thread so they can do it for you.

Andrew (ajays) / Brandon (hazey_flakes) - This one is for you guys, no ducking the issue please.

Fido - you need to check/edit your post as you have transposed 2020 and 2022 in a couple of places.

Hello Dect,

Thank you for letting me know about the date error: I did find one of the March dates should have been 2022 and I have corrected it.

If Zen have changed back for others and their lines are now OK they can change it back for me and as long as any Openreach changes that were also made last March at the time of the ZEN GEA change we should be back to normal in the Fido household.

Alternatively, ZEN can compensate me for the last three months of hassles and they can let me end the contract three months early as I don't want to prat around jumping through hoops as an unpaid test engineer for Beta Products putting up with a rubbish line.

I will give them a chance to make good but making changes behind the scenes without notice is whiffy.

Regards,
Fido

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Unless I’m missing something obvious here - they would surely have to put you on a completely separate PON for this to be beneficial.

If they don’t and just give you another drop from the same CBT then your still talking to the same optics in the exact same OLT port / same card etc...

So how would that be “better” / what does that prove.

Unless they’re planning to give you a drop from the neighbours DP which was going back to an ECI OLT (in the same headend exchange?)

It wont prove anything, it just gives me a fully working connection whilst keeping the "broken" line for Zen's testing. I presume they'll provision the service via BTW or whatever method was in use before the Zen GEA migration happened.

Interestingly according to records I already have an ECI ONT as well as the current Huawei... I'm guessing that was installed in the past at some point and someone took it from the property as there was no ONT when I moved in.
Zen were hoping that I could plug said ECI ONT back in to the 2nd fibre (that I don't have) and provision a working service on that.

We shall see what happens next.

Edited by FakeJake (Tue 21-Jun-22 23:27:13)

Fido - this does sound like a very familiar story. I hope you get your issue sorted. Hopefully you'll get the right people looking into it 👍

Hi Fido,

So, another victim comes out of the woodwork, I wonder how many more that there are? Happy to chat to you to confirm it is the same issue as I had, and in addition, I STRONGLY urge all Zen users reading this to check if they had a GEA migration in their orders, and run a speed check if they had one. This should show download speeds that they expect, but please do this via a cable, not interested in testing your WiFi speeds = It would be nice to know that there ARE people out there that have been successfully migrated rather than this ongoing fiasco, I did always suspect that more people than FakeJake and myself have been affected, and either don't realise, or are perhaps less demanding users than we are (I am a software performance tester, and as part of that, I really do use serious bandwidth daily).

I completely agree that using people as unpaid testers isn't a good idea, professionally I fully understand the benefits of internal testing and the damage that releasing untested products can do to reputations etc. This is especially true of non-functional elements such as performance, resilience, reliability etc. I eventually grew heartily fed up with re-proving the same problem that I became too much of a hassle to Zen I guess?

I will be super interested if people do check their GEA migration history, and we can see if people really are happy (as Zen suggest), or if this problem is more widespread than we are told. To do this, log into Zen, My Account, My Orders (bottom left), Order History - you will see something like below if you have been migrated:

Zen FTTP GEA Migration
zenxxxxx@zen Fulfilled on 21/03/2022 £0

Then go to Fast.com, and see what your speeds are, they should be close to what you pay for, and reliable over a few different runs

In reply to a post by FakeJake:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Unless I’m missing something obvious here - they would surely have to put you on a completely separate PON for this to be beneficial.

If they don’t and just give you another drop from the same CBT then your still talking to the same optics in the exact same OLT port / same card etc...

So how would that be “better” / what does that prove.

Unless they’re planning to give you a drop from the neighbours DP which was going back to an ECI OLT (in the same headend exchange?)

It wont prove anything, it just gives me a fully working connection whilst keeping the "broken" line for Zen's testing. I presume they'll provision the service via BTW or whatever method was in use before the Zen GEA migration happened.

Interestingly according to records I already have an ECI ONT as well as the current Huawei... I'm guessing that was installed in the past at some point and someone took it from the property as there was no ONT when I moved in.
Zen were hoping that I could plug said ECI ONT back in to the 2nd fibre (that I don't have) and provision a working service on that.

We shall see what happens next.

This thread is quite surreal. I can’t get my head around this.

1. You’ve got a Huawei ONT and presumably on a Huawei OLT out of Chester South. Your immediate next door neighbour however, incredibly has an ECI setup and claims they are on a 500 Mbps Zen package - in other words impossible!

2. You have a Huawei ONT but Openreach records claim you have an ECI.

3. You had a PON outage for 2 entire days - your neighbour was fine - but coincidentally / incredibly Steve also had a full PON outage over roughly the same period. What are the odds!?

4. Zen ran extensive field tests on their supplier gear at your headend exchange - but as yet no report of anything conclusive.

5. Meanwhile Zen want to give you another FTTP drop / connection - but back on BTW backhaul.

6. Openreach want to come on Friday to run more tests - even though they’ve previously given all their gear a clean bill of health on all this (but the line card for the PON failed on Friday).

This is becoming like something out of Stranger Things! Cue Kate Bush. 😂

I posted in another thread the other day about threads to forget but this one I will never forget for the reasons you have just listed!

You had a PON outage for 2 entire days - your neighbour was fine - but coincidentally / incredibly Steve also had a full PON outage over roughly the same period. What are the odds!?

My outage was more or less exactly 60 minutes rather than two whole days, but you make a good point.

Regarding the thread being one to forget, it certainly shouldn't have gone on this long, that's for certain. The fix is easy and obvious, and the lessons to be learnt are exactly the same.

I eagerly await a post from anyone who has been migrated and experienced no (or any) problems like we have, I do realise forums are where disgruntled people congregate, but it'd be good to know.