What is the minimum contract term for Zen DV contract if a customer migrates from existing Zen PSTN to Zen DV? 1, 12, 18 months? Is there any way to exit early?

Are Zen only offering Zen DV with 1000 minutes for £6 / month or have they decided to offer a PAYG package to anyone who wouldn't see the benefit of the minutes package?

Will a customer currently contracted to Zen FTTC with a no price increase for life guarantee, who first migrates from Zen PSTN to Zen DV, and then possibly migrates to another VoIP provide in the future, definitely not lose the price guarantee?

Late to the party on this!

You can use the Zen digital voice login on other devices but it will only work if you are behind the static IP address on the Fritz!box

Hi, I'm late to this party, but just trying to wrap my head around things.

Why does the static IP have to be on the Fritzbox ? My router will happily get the same static IP from Zen as the Fritzbox does, and I can feed it with SIP details if I have them, including any NAT traversal stuff.

No need for Fritzbox (that is the purpose of this thread!

sebus

Sorry, I was just preparing an updated summary of my current understanding, but you beat me to it smile. Here's what I currently think the situation is.

If I want to use my own router ( and I do, because I'm using features the FritzBox doesn't support ), and I don't want to port my number to some other provider ( and I don't, because that would loose me the current broadband deal I have, I don't want to pay more, and I can't find a standalone SIP based VoIP deal that I like ), I have three options.

1. Configure my router ( which supports SIP and has phone sockets ) with SIP parameters that allow me to plug my phone into it.

This is the obvious solution but, rather obnoxiously, not supported by Zen even though they have all the info required. However the info in this thread looks like it might allow me to achieve it. I think I can see how to make this work, provided I can get hold of the password. Thanks to all who have helped !

2. Put the FritzBox on the WAN side of my router, and have it make the PPPoE connection.

The public IP then belongs to the FritzBox, and I assume I could just plug my phone in to it. At least, that's what the ( very minimal ) Zen 'documentation' implies. I would also need to plug my existing router into it.

But it's not at all clear to me that there's an easy way to do this which will continue to allow my router to be the gateway, DHCP server, firewall and QOS manager for all my VLAN's and subnets on the LAN side. I don't believe I can just put my router into bridge mode and preserve all this functionality.

3. Put the FritzBox on the LAN side of my router.

This is clearly a possibility as far as AVM/Fritz!OS is concerned - see

https://en.avm.de/service/knowledge-base/dok/FRITZ-B...
and
https://en.avm.de/service/knowledge-base/dok/FRITZ-B...
https://en.avm.de/service/knowledge-base/dok/FRITZ-B...

The 7530 appears to support this 'IP Client' mode. I'm assuming that I need to punch appropriate holes in my main router's firewall, per the info provided here :

https://www.zen.co.uk/help-support/general-sip-settings

There's a post from @oolon somewhere high above that describes what I think is this method.

I'm going to shoot for option 3 here, for the simple reason that it will make my phone cable routing easier if it works smile. Thanks to all.

In reply to a post by EvD:

Are Zen only offering Zen DV with 1000 minutes for £6 / month or have they decided to offer a PAYG package to anyone who wouldn't see the benefit of the minutes package?

TL:DR There is a Zen DV PAYG

I received an email this am from Zen saying that I had been migrated to the new system.
I had not responded to the offer of DV as we very rarely use the landline (for calls). In fact for many years we had more nuisance calls & wrong numbers than genuine calls. We would be happy to ditch it except for the price guarantee & we hope to move later this year so would not want a new contract. Anyway my account in Zen states that I am on DV PAYG. I was paying £34.99 (inc VAT) for Unlimited Fibre 2 FTTC 80Mb/s including phone line with PAYG calls and am on the price guarantee. I received a small refund relating to the change of the last 6 days I had paid up front for and there is an invoice on the system but I have not received yet raised for a slightly smaller amount for charges for 5 days suggesting a free day on the day of potential disruption of transfer as the upshot of it is as expected the equivalent appears to be the same overall cost of same £34.99 (inc VAT) going forward. This means that given the UL Fibre 2 is currently £34 I will be getting the DV PAYG for 99p/month but probably only because of the price guarantee. I suspect if I ditched the DV PAYG I might affect my price guarantee. Also I could not see any reference to DV PAYG on the Zen site. Hope this clarifies things a bit at least.

Are you so attached to whatever phone you have now, that you try hard to keep using it?
Why not just buy a proper IP phone (like Yealink) and just plug it to your network?

No need to have router with SIP port, because that is just network device

It will just work

sebus

Edited by sebus (Fri 30-Jun-23 13:04:50)

In reply to a post by sebus:

Tried again, and indeed, “Display Name” HAD TO be empty
Once re-registered, it works fine

In fact ”Display Name” CAN have same phone number, but not words

Also for Yealink on Zen (because they use different server for Register and Incoming calls) one needs to DISABLE

Accept SIP Trust Server Only

sebus

I presume Zen warned you about the impending migration to Zen DV in order for you to expect downtime and to know that you would likely need to unplug your phone and plug it into the FXS port on the router. Zen don't appear to be advertising a Zen DV PAYG package as of yet. I cannot find anything. Can anyone ask Zen to move them to it or do we have to wait to be contacted?

I got an email at the 4th of May saying the change to Digital Voice (but not any particular package) would be made at some point and that I would not be notified when but they would say when it had been done. They also said I should get in contact if I was considered vulnerable, presumably because of the inoperability of the phone if there was a power cut etc. There was a link to a video saying what to do re the router. The next information I had regarding it was yesterday to say it was complete. I was still getting a dial tone with the phone plugged in the microfilter but did not test call it. I am aware that under some circumstances you can still get a dial tone with no number on the line. I plugged the phone to the back of the router and tested an incoming call which worked. I have had the general marketing emails in between suggesting I get a digital voice package. To confirm my account definitely says I am on DV PAYG.