ISP Zen Internet Move to Tackle FTTP Broadband Speed Issues
Over the past few weeks a small number of Zen Internet’s UK broadband customers – primarily those on their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) packages – have reported a drop in speed, which in some cases has been significant. The issue seems to relate to a platform migration, but thankfully the ISP has now resolved “most” of it.
Customer feedback suggests that the situation may relate to Zen’s ongoing Project Plexus programme, which started in 2016 (here) and partly reflects their efforts to unbundle more exchanges from BT (i.e. giving themselves greater control over various aspects). Generally, this has all gone very well.
However, over the past few weeks we have received sporadic complaints about a drop in FTTP speeds, which appears to have followed a recent platform migration (i.e. switching from BT Wholesale and / or TalkTalk backhaul links to their own GEA Cablelinks for data capacity – cutting out the middleman, as it were).
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Such migrations would normally result in either a performance gain or no appreciable difference for the customer, thus it’s unusual to see the opposite. The best example of this issue can currently be found on TBB’s Forum via a whopping 14-page thread, which dates all the way back to late March.
John Lyons, Zen’s Technology Director, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“We are aware of an interoperability issue that is impacting a small minority of our FTTP customers post-migration. We take our customer experience seriously and are investigating this, working with our technical partners’ engineers.
We’ve made changes that have resolved this in most known cases, but for anyone still experiencing issues we invite them to contact our customer service team directly so we can work together to resolve.”
The situation is perhaps a useful reminder that FTTP, while a million miles better than older copper line broadband services, can still suffer from speed issues when problems occur within an ISPs own network. We do see similar speed gripes pop-up, from time to time, with other full fibre providers (different causes), so Zen are by no means alone. The good news is that the current issues don’t appear to have hit a large number of customers.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I wonder if there’s any way to see if these issues are related to the trouble I had back in January (same bottlenecks maybe?) which I made a forum post for? My migration over to BT from Zen resolved the speed issues I had at the time.
Better late than never Mark, told you about this on 12th April and its taken you until 28th April to do a piece on it.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/04/peak-time-latency-strikes-part-of-virgin-medias-uk-network.html#comment-261031
There’s a thing called Easter and family that was more important 😉 . But the other thing is, I will only investigate once a few people have reported it to me, and yours was counted in that evidence. However, I will add that sending such information via private email is much more effective than posting in anonymous comments, which has a low weight of credibility.
@Mark
Aren’t we family too? 😉
Mark – I’ll remember that the next time I report something through the anonymous tip off line.
Are Zen still using PPPoE for FTTP? Get rid of that and make things more efficiant.
As it uses Openreach GEA and they do, er, yes…
PPP is optional over GEA. See Sky and TalkTalk for example.
Use of PPPoE is more to do with their use of TalkTalk and BT backhaul in some places, both of which use PPPoE (though TalkTalk doesn’t in consumer, only when it sells backhaul to others), I think its so they know which ISP to bill for the data used.
Either way its not a massive concern.
If your router can’t handle PPPoE then perhaps it’s time to upgrade to a more modern router? Hell even the freebie kit ISPs give out can handle PPPoE without breaking a sweat. Bit of a non issue.
ISPs seem to be clinging on to PPPoE for FTTC/FTTP in most cases it is not needed and adds processing overheads to both ISPs and the CPEs in peoples houses. I wonder if anyone has worked out how much electricity we burn adding it on when not needed? Yes you can get boxes that can deliver 900M service with PPP but how much more power does that take compared to IPoE?
Openreach GEA & CityFibre are L2 Ethernet services, they both support IPoE (DHCP) or PPPoE.
Things like BT Wholesale’s WBC/WMBC services force PPP, on WMBC shared it is how they separate ISPs.
TalkTalk & Sky have both moved to IPoE on FTTC/P so don’t have these overheads.
The BNGs ISPs need to do PPP are expensive, power hungry and in past experience can cause issues working with PON networks.
This issue affected me around those dates, and Zen support weren’t having it. I even tested directly with the ONT and a Laptop PPP client to show the issue, but it “is likely a home network configuration issue”.
Issue has since resolved itself, but I’m disappointed in the lack of transparency and accountability recently. Our line was re-graded a few days prior which dropped IPv6 connectivity as well, which still needs manually re-requested via email.
I have no idea what you’re going on about, my Zen Internet connection is fine and has been for a number of years. I pass a lot of bandwidth and so do the other customers I recommended to switch to Zen.
I wouldn’t be with any other ISP because all the others are tosh.
Hi Richard Tang!
Had the opposite experience, with the opposite recommendation tbh.
@Andy Grey Rider
Are you on FTTP and have you been GEA migrated yet?
I’ve also seen this from time to time. Zen have always blown me off since a router and/or ONT reboot usually fixes it.
I did notice the increase in speed.
The problem wasn’t across the board, some servers I’d get the full 1gbps and others would be 200-500mbps.
I know it wasn’t the Server end as my office FTTP connection would get 1gbps on these servers.
interesting…
so if they are cutting out the middle man (BT/TalkTalk) does that mean they might start offering plans with higher upload speeds?
i think being capped at 150mbps is poor form…
correct me if wrong but that upload cap comes from BT itself not from zen?
Not on BTOR FTTP they won’t. That product is capped by BT still.
They offer symmetric services if you’re in a CF area.
Think you have been fobbed of Mark, every customer I have seen report this in various places on the net still has the problem, there is some clustered on TBB forums for an easy find.
@Steve
whats a CF area?
Cityfibre.
oh… thanks Steve.
i suppose i wont be getting symmetrical services anytime soon… 🙁
im up in Welwyn
Zen users still have speed issues nearly a week after they told this website the issues had been fixed!!!!!!