If its working better at the test socket you could try replacing your Master Socket.
I got a new NTE5 socket from eBay for around £10 when i moved to a new house with a knackered old plate.
I can not remember which version I got, I [s]think[/s] there is a
bt-master-socket guide on the TBB main site

Edited by RichTea23 (Mon 14-Aug-23 15:42:58)

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

If its working better at the test socket you could try replacing your Master Socket.
I got a new NTE5 socket from eBay for around £10 when i moved to a new house with a knackered old plate.
I can not remember which version I got, I [s]think[/s] there is a
bt-master-socket guide on the TBB main site

It's basically the same regardless. Reset it and it's 8mb upload for a bit then it falls off to sub 2 mb over either hours or a couple of days.

I did look at replacement sockets. If it's the filter inside then I was going to get another and just swap the faceplate

Spent the afternoon arguing with the Fritzbox new modem. Did the same thing expecting the same results and got different ones.

After having issues with it just not working properly when it was being a dumb entity it suddenly decided it was going to. I swear the settings are the same. I turned off the 'check internet settings' or similar so maybe that was getting it in a loop.

It's been a bit hiccupy to start.

BT faceplate top is off and I'm still using the middle socket with combined splitter/filter. It's definitely slower to re-establish a connection using the front plate rather than using the middle socket.

No rain forecast for ages so it might be a while before it goes on the blink again.

Working internet lasted a whole 10 minutes. Then it fell over.

Ordered a dumb as bricks Zyxel old fashioned modem to try.

Back on the technicolour. Interestingly Andrews and Arnold don't offer the Fritzbox and they have technicolours and this older style Zyxel too.

Spent some time googling and it seems the Fritzbox is complete junk, particularly on Zen.

The thing is, a Fritz!box is what Zen supply by default, so most people on Zen are going to be using one.

Therefore most people talking about a problem on their Zen Internet connection are as it happens going to be using one.

So if you google for Zen customers having an Internet connection problem and they are asked what router they are on, as it happen it is mostly going to be a Fritz!box.

If you were to somehow search for people not having a problem with their Zen Internet connection, they would also happen to mostly have a Fritz!box.

And if you consider who is more likely to change the default ISP router is more likely to be a person who knows what they want to do differently on their LAN.

So there is a shed load of selection bias built into that googling! That's just a function of probability though.
It does not necessarily tell you anything useful.

Edited by prlzx (Wed 16-Aug-23 19:56:53)

In reply to a post by prlzx:

The thing is, a Fritz!box is what Zen supply by default, so most people on Zen are going to be using one.

Therefore most people talking about a problem on their Zen Internet connection are as it happens going to be using one.

So if you google for Zen customers having an Internet connection problem and they are asked what router they are on, as it happen it is mostly going to be a Fritz!box.

If you were to somehow search for people not having a problem with their Zen Internet connection, they would also happen to mostly have a Fritz!box.

And if you consider who is more likely to change the default ISP router is more likely to be a person who knows what they want to do differently on their LAN.

So there is a shed load of selection bias built into that googling! That's just a function of probability though.
It does not necessarily tell you anything useful.

Could easily be true. When I joined Zen the technicolour was the free default option I think.

I'd be curious to hear from people with a fritzbox on Zen that are fine, particularly ones that have been moved to Zen's own backhaul and off BT's. GEA I think it's called. Zen moved me just before Christmas but I didn't really notice.

Technicolour has been good as gold until something changed in July and it's all been on the wonk since.

II've been using the default supplied Fritzbox on full fibre for almost 3 years now with no significant issues - obviosly that isn't using the ADSL modem fubctionality so I can't comment on how good that is.

I have had to disable the auto-channel selection on 2.4GHz wifi as it otherwise tends to select one that gets too much interference from the neighbours (There are at least 14 other wifi visible in my house).
Also after a recent firmware upgrade I disabled the auto-DNS fallback as the router would several times a day decide there were (probably non-existent) issues and tempoarily switch to Googles DNS rather than stick with Zens default.severs.

Just to throw more chaff into your conversation - I'm using a Fritz!Box not on a Zen connection and have been for the last 15+ years in the UK (not the same box obviously because I had such a positive experience with all the AVM hardware I used when living in Germany - having the DECT/VOIP rolled into the same box that is also a WireGuard VPN end point is all additional positives to me) only issue I've ever had with the wi-fi on it is reach - but that is the same with all of the other routers I've borrowed to test... it's almost like there's a specification that all of the wireless runs to...

Easily resolved by employing an old Fritz!Box (which must be close to a decade old now, but still getting updates) as a wireless repeater (cabled back to the mesh master)

Edited by hunnymonster (Thu 17-Aug-23 15:11:06)

I'm totally happy with the Fritz box. I get these speeds all the time:


The only annoyance I've had (easily resolved) was when they moved me to DV the new configuration they pushed out removed my existing Sipgate config.

Got the Fritzbox working. The wifi stopped working properly so the admin interface was inaccessible but the weird phone connect reset worked to reset it somehow.

Followed the same instructions as I had before in how to set it in bridge mode and this time they actually worked. No idea why the first run failed as I used the exact same page from some Belgian internet company and Zen themselves send out that same page as their instructions on how to do bridge mode. Belgian internet company instructions to reset with the analogue phone were the ones that worked as well.

Weather looks terrible so there will be good test conditions