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Schrödinger's Full Fibre

jimbobbeh

Casual Member
Bit stuck here and not sure what to do next! I've been a customer with Zen for a few years now. In July they emailed me to say Full Fibre was now available to order for my property. I placed an order immediately.

Fast forward to the end of December 2023 I get an email from Zen saying the order had been cancelled as Openreach had said it wasn't possible to get Full Fibre.

I raised an enquiry with Openreach and they called me and confirmed that Full Fibre was absolutely available at my property and the order should not have been cancelled.

Zen are saying that it was Openreach who cancelled the order, so I appear to be in a position where Openreach are saying that Full Fibre is both available, but also not available.

Any advice on where to go from here?
 
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The first line of text is the pertinent part, especially the end - "Alternate L2C Solution Required"

This is normally indicative that there are mitigating circumstances why a standard install is not possible.

Is there something 'different' about your property?
 
Ah, probably the "L2C solution" bit has thrown a spanner in the works - think this means they can't use the the usual ladder anchoring system (Tetra) - do you have a listed building, rendered wall, wooden/PVC cladding at all?

This shouldn't be an issue but they may need to use a hoist etc instead of ladders - and probably a poorly designed ordering system that can't cope with it.
 
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My property is a standard Victorian mid-terrace house. It's not listed, wall isn't rendered, no wooden or PVC cladding. All the neighbours I know on my street with the same sort of house have full fibre and had no issues getting it.
 
Sounds like you either need to try again with Zen, or try another ISP.

I wonder if the engineer for the job was an Openreach contractor, not direct staff, who couldn't do that type of install and binned it.
 
It's possible - will continue the line of enquiry with Zen but they aren't being very helpful at the moment. Any recommendations for others willing to do battle with Openreach?
 
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Andrews and Arnold (AA ISP) or I have had great support from IDNET
I'd second this.
A&A Are basically the go-to option if you have a non-standard issue that needs sorting out. They even have guarantees to fix people's lines where other ISPs have failed to get Openreach to sort it out due to more complex issues. They'll push OR to do whatever it is you're paying them to provide a lot more than pretty much any other ISP will. And whenever you speak to A&A You'll always be talking to a fairly small team who all seem to have a very good technical knowledge of the products and services they offer.

IDNET are my current main ISP and while I haven't put them to the test to sort out complex issues nor heard too many stories about other people doing similar, I would have absolute confidence in asking them to do so if I ever did have trouble based on the fantastic experiences I have had with their customer service on the couple of instances where I Have engaged with them.
 
Another vote for Andrews and Arnold. Excellent ISP.
 
No, they don't have the same message.
Okay. Fill out this form: https://www.openreach.com/forms/fibre-broadband-availability---customer-form

At the 'Please tell us what this is about' choose 'I cannot get fibre broadband but my neighbours can'.

Unless there's a problem with getting a cable from the pole to you, maybe you're the neighbour of the guy on Think Broadband who removed Openreach's right to fly cables over his property, Openreach need to fix their database and when done even the most indifferent ISP should be able to get you an order through.
 
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Okay. Fill out this form: https://www.openreach.com/forms/fibre-broadband-availability---customer-form

At the 'Please tell us what this is about' choose 'I cannot get fibre broadband but my neighbours can'.

Unless there's a problem with getting a cable from the pole to you, maybe you're the neighbour of the guy on Think Broadband who removed Openreach's right to fly cables over his property, Openreach need to fix their database and when done even the most indifferent ISP should be able to get you an order through.
I already did that and they called me and told me I could absolutely get Full Fibre, but could only get it through an ISP.
 
It looks like an engineer has come out, decided they can't be bothered and then marked the job as a more complicated one. This has then gone back to Zen and they've not been able to figure out what to do.

Give up with Zen since they seem to have no desire to be the "get the service you pay for" ISP any more.

I had something very similar last year where someone from MJ Quinn turned up and didn't want to deal with an overgrown tree by the pole. The tree was on public land and the council had an agreement in place with Openreach where they can cut any branches they need to if it's causing issues for utility access, just for whatever reason the engineer decided to press the "customer needs to cut the tree" button and not "we need to arrange the tree to be cut" button, presumably so the job would be off their books.
 
It's not a big loss, tbh. Get a cityfibre connection if you can, symmetrical speeds that for some reason Openreach don't want to do

If you can't get Cityfibre, through an ISP like Vodafone, don't worry! they also run via Openreach
 
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