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Zen Internet - What Are They Really Like?

Mr_Paul

Casual Member
Hello Everyone,

I have just joined these forums, and would like to ask Zen customers about their experiences with the service and the company.

Currently we have Plusnet FTTC at home, which syncs at the full contracted 80/20. We have had this for about 3 years now, (previously with BT on similar service), To be fair, the service is very reliable - "DSL Uptime" usually exceeds 60 days at a time before it resets. The weak point seems to be Openreach master socket - specifically the connection between the faceplate and the engineer's test socket - it tends to go noisy, not enough to interrupt the broadband though. Both parts of the socket have been replaced on numerous occasions, which fixes it for a while!

We are not heavy users in terms of simultaneous download use and it is very rare for us to experience any issues such as buffering on video streaming. Reliability, ie service availability uptime, is very important to us however.

Our current contract expires early next year, but I'm already thinking ahead about a change of both ISP and network technology/provider. This is for a number of reasons, one being the cost and their in-contract price rises, (now £3 per year on a 24 month contract), and another being how I actually feel about the company after some dealings with them a while back.

CityFibre FTTP have been available here for a couple of years or so, and I'm thinking about moving to them and one of the ISPs that use their network.

This is where the point of starting this thread comes in:

Having recently read many posts on various forums, I keep coming back to Zen as my choice. That is where I have a slight problem: everything that I read about Zen is positive, any ongoing issues seem to be with their network providers, (Openreach, CityFibre etc), and their pricing looks to be competitive as well. No one seems to have a bad word to say about Zen!

So my question is: are Zen really as good as the reports say? What do their current customers think?

I have spoken to them on the phone a few times with questions and been very happy with both the answers and the way in which my enquiries were dealt with. However, I have dealt with other utility companies in the past who are similarly good when trying to get you to sign up, but once you are committed in a contract, any issues are very difficult to get sorted out.

Do Zen customers on CityFibre find the service to be reliable?

How is fault reporting dealt with? Can you actually still speak to someone on the phone, or is it online reporting only?

Is their billing accurate and reliable?

In case it is relevant, I am in Milton Keynes and I'm looking at the 300Mbps package.

TIA for any replies,

Paul

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everything that I read about Zen is positive, any ongoing issues seem to be with their network providers
I'm not a Zen user, but you're clearly not reading the same forums as me.

The most common whinge seems to be: people who are moved from the BT Wholesale backhaul network to the Zen backhaul network start seeing network performance problems which don't seem to be resolvable (except by getting Zen to move you back to BT Wholesale) - that's clearly a problem with Zen's own network, although these problems seem to be at a low enough severity that many non-technical users would not notice. The second one is about selection of routing: people in London having their sessions terminated in Manchester or vice versa, leading to longer ping round-trip times (which gamers tend to get upset about, even though many game servers equalise ping times for fairness). The third one seems to be "customer service isn't as good as it used to be".

Having said that, they could well have a large number of happy customers and a small number with problems who are vocal on forums.

FWIW, I've been on Aquiss for coming up to a year (300/50M Openreach FTTP) and happy. There were a couple of issues with IPv6 routing, which were resolved. Response to tickets is rapid and clueful, often from the top guy himself. Aquiss now sell service over the Cityfibre network too. There is some close relationship between Aquiss and Cityfibre/Entanet (e.g. even on my Openreach line, my IPv4+IPv6 addresses are Cityfibre's)
 
@candlerb
Thanks for your reply.

Regarding the "Zen backhaul network" and getting "Zen to move you back to BT Wholesale" - is that something that a customer can just ask them to do, or is it something that they only do as a last resort, (preferring their own backhaul)?

TBH, our existing 80/20 does us fine with regards to bandwidth. Our minimum guaranteed D/L speed with Plusnet is about 63Mbps. Zen's 100Mbps package would probably do us, but I noticed that their guaranteed minimums are only half the peak speed on each package, so 50Mbps. Also, I can see us, (like most other people), making more use of video streaming in the future, but not significantly more.

Regarding your second point, about selection of routing: none of us here are gamers - at least not of the type of games that require the best latency!

Regarding Aquiss:
Although I have a technical background, I spent 39 years working in the telecoms industry, predominantly in live television broadcast engineering, it was when everything began moving to IP based networks that I really started to struggle with it - so much so that I ended up retiring early!
So when you mention things like "There were a couple of issues with IPv6 routing", I start to get nervous. Is Aquiss better suited to customers who are technically clued up and able to resolve many of their problems themselves, or would they still be suitable for an "IP novice" such as myself?

Thanks again for your reply.

Does anyone else have any comments please?

TIA

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I am on Zen CF 900 MBPS. Ive also used them professionally for Wholesale.
I rate them highly - There team is good but you will get the occasional person who might be lacklustre.

I think you do right by going Zen. If you are really techie and want really good service A&A ISP are great.
Also Yayzi and IDNET are pretty sound too :)
 
@xEl-Capitanx

Thanks for your reply.

Although I'm planning to use Zen for the broadband, I'm intending to use A&A's VoIP telephone service. I have also spoken to them recently, and again found them to be very helpful.

"If you are really techie" - I used to be, what I call "tech" now, is what many people would call "vintage". :)

For example, we all use Linux (Mint) operating system here, not Windows. Some people find that technical, but I'm comfortable with faulting and repairing our home computers. With OS issues though, I'm happy to admit that almost all of the fixes I do are by copy/pasting someone else's instructions. ;)

Out of interest, do you use the Zen supplied Fritzbox router and do you have VoIP? I was wondering if the Fritzbox can be configured to do A&A VoIP, (I can see that it has an RJ11 telephone socket). If it can, that would save me from buying a Grandstream box to do it.

TIA

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I use VOIP Studio for my 3rd party telephone system.
The Fritzox software is special to Zen - You can unlock it if need be via guides readily available. I use a Asus router to connect to the CF ONT.
 
@xEl-Capitanx
Do you happen to know if unlocking the Fritzbox software is something that Zen are OK with - even if, (I'm assuming), they don't support it?

(I'm guessing that the Fritzbox is, and remains, the property of Zen, so if you leave you have to return it - like other ISPs?).

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The most common whinge seems to be: people who are moved from the BT Wholesale backhaul network to the Zen backhaul network start seeing network performance problems which don't seem to be resolvable
I joined Zen in January 2022 and I believe I was effected by this and was definitely one to "whinge" (though when you pay for 900 Mbps and get 300 I feel that's valid).
This year I have gone with a 1 month rolling contract with Freeola (a Zen wholesaler) to see how it performs and all those issues I had before, no longer exist. So maybe the bad period has passed, though I don't have any other datapoints to contribute here of other people who have tried to go back.

The second one is about selection of routing: people in London having their sessions terminated in Manchester or vice versa, leading to longer ping round-trip times
Whilst true, depending on your routing equipment, you can choose where to terminate. Mine was initially targeting Manchester too but with a config change that was avoidable. Not really a great solution for a lot but it's not the end of the world in my case.

The third one seems to be "customer service isn't as good as it used to be".
Yes, during my issues in 2022 it's safe to say that customer service was bad. Though this seems to be a common theme nowadays :D Fortunately this year, Freeola are the ones that dealt with Zen when I had a provisioning issue, and it was much smoother.

TBH, our existing 80/20 does us fine with regards to bandwidth. Our minimum guaranteed D/L speed with Plusnet is about 63Mbps. Zen's 100Mbps package would probably do us, but I noticed that their guaranteed minimums are only half the peak speed on each package, so 50Mbps. Also, I can see us, (like most other people), making more use of video streaming in the future, but not significantly more.
I doubt, even during the major issues they had, that you'd have seen many issues with those rates. I wouldn't be too concerned about performance with that in mind.
 
I have a Fritzbox from Zen sitting here and they never asked for for it to be returned. VoIP does work well on it but I am old school and tend to have lots of devices doing separate things so have the Gigaset VoIP adapter that I bought from AAISP.

Zen was fine on Openreach FTTP but went to Aquiss as Zen customer support was hit and miss, only moving from Aquiss soon as YouFibre is now live at my house and going to save a shed load of money and jump to much higher speeds… I may be moaning about YouFibre in my next post 😂
 
Not a Zen customer, but feedback I see is their support is not as good as it was in their early days, for that Idnet are better, and also there is problems if you in the south of the country you may occasionally be routed via their Manchester gateway, they also have a lot of "during the night" drops to facilitate their gateway balancing.

They not the worst ISP, but I dont consider them one of the top tier one's now either.

For Cityfibre the 3 I suggest are one of AAISP, Idnet, and Aquiss.
 
I was a Zen customer for several years, and was happy enough that I went back to them when I needed a connection a couple of years ago. My experience is that the customer service has detereriorated. Years ago you could be sure of getting a clued-up and helpful response every time. There are still some of those people there and if you get one you'll be fine, but unfortunately there are now also those who don't understand the question, or who default to "It must be your network" mode when it clearly isn't (e.g. PC connected direct to ONT). You have to keep trying until you get someone who knows what they are talking about.

I used to recommend Zen without hesitation. I still think they are OK, probably better than some of the others, but they are no longer special. When my present contract ends I'll be having a good look at the competition.
 
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Thanks to everyone who has replied so far.

A couple of running themes are standing out to me so far.

Firstly, "network routing":

As I said in my original post, we are in Milton Keynes, (so south as far as Manchester is concerned, but not as far as London). We are not players of the type of fast reaction games that I think would be affected by a slightly higher latency?
So, would it be fair to say that we would be unlikely to notice this extra latency, particularly when taking in to account the almost four-fold increase in download speed?

How does Zen route their traffic from CityFibre's various Fibre Exchanges back to Manchester? Does each Fibre Exchange have their own dedicated circuit back to Zen HQ, of is there one big pipe that picks up traffic en-route - ie Zen customer traffic originating in London passes through Milton Keynes, (let's assume that CityFibre have an exchange local to me), where more customer traffic is added, and on to, (say), Birmingham where more is added and so on, all the way to Manchester?

The second theme that I am seeing is about customer service:

I was reading an online a survey earlier, (unfortunately I can't find it now), regarding customer service particularly, that enabled comparison between a number of selectable providers. I only tried it with Zen, BT and Plusnet, but Zen came out significantly better than the other two.
So, would it be fair to say that whilst Zen's customer service is not as good now compared with what longer standing customers remember, it is still very good when compared with other ISPs, (accepting that there will always be exceptions)?


The Zen 300/300Mbps package that I'm looking at is £32 per month.
AAISP's pricing structure would not really suit us, they only offer me a choice of 160/160Mbps at £37/month for 1TB of traffic, (probably not quite enough) or £47/month for 10TB, (far too much) - or a 1G/1G service at £57 or £67/month for the same traffic quotas.
Aquiss offer me the same 160Mbps or 1G packages as AAISP, at £28.50 and £31.50 average respectively after taking in to account introductory offers on a 12 month contract, but look to be significantly more expensive after that.
IDNet, once again only seem to offer me 160 or 900Mbps, at £27.50 or £33.33/month respecively, which looks interesting.

As I said in my original post, out current 80/20 FTTC is generally good enough for us, but I would like to take the opportunity to upgrade a bit. 160Mbps might be enough for us, but for the other ISPs recommended so far, the next step up is always 900/1000Mbps - a big jump and almost certainly far too much for our needs.

Zen appear to be the only provider recommended here so far that offers options between 100/160 and 900/1000Mbps - 300 or 500.

Does anyone else have any suggestion of who I should be looking at please, (and any further comments on Zen)?

TIA

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So when you mention things like "There were a couple of issues with IPv6 routing", I start to get nervous. Is Aquiss better suited to customers who are technically clued up and able to resolve many of their problems themselves, or would they still be suitable for an "IP novice" such as myself?
You would be fine with Aquiss. As a non-technical user, you wouldn't even have noticed what I reported - but I'm glad to know they are responsive to issues.

The only thing to note about Aquiss is that you do need to provide your own router - they provide a list of ones which they know work and are happy to support.

In return for this, you get your first 6 months half price.
 
Zen appear to be the only provider recommended here so far that offers options between 100/160 and 900/1000Mbps - 300 or 500.
On Openreach, Aquiss do offer 160, 330, 500, 900.

They don't bother with these bands on Cityfibre because the cost difference is so tiny it's not worth doing. For you, the 150/150 package would be plenty at £38, and the 900/900 package is £42. This more closely reflects the underlying cost structure, i.e. the main costs are the capital cost of the fibre in the ground, support and billing. Bandwidth is very cheap.

But it sounds to me like you're decided to go with Zen - so go with them, especially if you get a good price. It will work fine. Don't worry about a few milliseconds of latency, you won't notice it in the slightest. People in Scotland get 20ms+ of latency due to the laws of physics, and the Internet is still usable :)

And don't worry about "guaranteed speeds" on FTTP. If they sell 100M, you'll get 100M 99% of the time. This is just to cover themselves in case suddenly everyone in your street is downloading at the same time, which is very unlikely. Speed guarantees are much more important on FTTC where the line can degrade over time.
 
So, would it be fair to say that we would be unlikely to notice this extra latency, particularly when taking in to account the almost four-fold increase in download speed?
Correct, you're not likely going to notice. This is even if you end up exiting in Manchester.

How does Zen route their traffic from CityFibre's various Fibre Exchanges back to Manchester? Does each Fibre Exchange have their own dedicated circuit back to Zen HQ, of is there one big pipe that picks up traffic en-route - ie Zen customer traffic originating in London passes through Milton Keynes, (let's assume that CityFibre have an exchange local to me), where more customer traffic is added, and on to, (say), Birmingham where more is added and so on, all the way to Manchester?
Sorry, not entirely following this question. Zen have points where they "exit" to the internet, in Manchester and London. How they get to those two points will depend heavily on where you live. The information may not even be public.

So, would it be fair to say that whilst Zen's customer service is not as good now compared with what longer standing customers remember, it is still very good when compared with other ISPs, (accepting that there will always be exceptions)?
I guess we can only go on averages. One person's experience will not necessarily reflect the service you'll get. Ideally you won't even need support :D

They don't bother with these bands on Cityfibre because the cost difference is so tiny it's not worth doing
These wholesale tiers simply don't exist on CityFibre. Zen will be buying the 900 product from Openreach Cityfibre and artificially limiting it themselves.

And don't worry about "guaranteed speeds" on FTTP. If they sell 100M, you'll get 100M 99% of the time.
100% this.

Edit: Typo
 
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@candlerb @Msh
Thanks for your replies.
"Sorry, not entirely following this question. Zen have points where they "exit" to the internet, in Manchester and London. How they get to those two points will depend heavily on where you live. The information may not even be public."

I was asking if it was known if Zen's backhaul network from CityFibre's exchanges are direct circuits from each exchange back to "Zen HQ", or if it is like a train that stops at various stations en-route to its destination, picking up passengers/traffic at each stop - and becoming more congested as it gets nearer to its terminus?

Ah, so Zen can also connect to the internet in London can they? That is something that I wasn't previously aware of. Everything I had read so far only mentioned Manchester/Rochdale - which is about 150 miles from me, whereas London is only 50 miles away.

"These wholesale tiers simply don't exist on CityFibre. Zen will be buying the 900 product from Openreach and artificially limiting it themselves."

That ties in with something that I read elsewhere about some Zen customers reporting that whilst their download speed had been correctly provisioned at 300/500Mbps, their "symmetrical" upload speed was running at 900! (This didn't apply to Zen customers who are on their 100Mbps package - presumably using CityFibre's 160 service).

"
And don't worry about "guaranteed speeds" on FTTP. If they sell 100M, you'll get 100M 99% of the time.
100% this."
Thank you - that's reassuring.

"But it sounds to me like you're decided to go with Zen"

Not entirely, but is certainly looking that way! The existing FTTC contract doesn't expire until next April, though I was going to allow a couple of months before that to get FTTP provided, in case of last minute unforeseen installation problems and to allow a short period of dual running to iron out any issues. For reasons I won't go in to here, although none of us work from home, any time without internet is a real big problem. :(

I'm actually now contemplating making the switch sooner than that and swallowing the extra Early Termination Charges!


Thanks for all of the replies so far. If anyone has anything further to contribute, please do.

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they also have a lot of "during the night" drops to facilitate their gateway balancing.
@WKDRED
Are you referring here to "switching breaks" of just a few seconds, or longer duration outages?
How regularly do these occur?

I often have difficulty sleeping at night, so I'm often on my computer in the early hours of the morning. To have regular outages, (more than a few seconds), at that time would be an issue for me.
 
I was asking if it was known if Zen's backhaul network from CityFibre's exchanges are direct circuits from each exchange back to "Zen HQ", or if it is like a train that stops at various stations en-route to its destination, picking up passengers/traffic at each stop - and becoming more congested as it gets nearer to its terminus?
I have no idea how things are pieced together, from what I have heard they tend to have pretty generous margins on their backhaul.

Ah, so Zen can also connect to the internet in London can they? That is something that I wasn't previously aware of. Everything I had read so far only mentioned Manchester/Rochdale - which is about 150 miles from me, whereas London is only 50 miles away.
Yep, everything from here goes via London. It doesn't head North.

That ties in with something that I read elsewhere about some Zen customers reporting that whilst their download speed had been correctly provisioned at 300/500Mbps, their "symmetrical" upload speed was running at 900! (This didn't apply to Zen customers who are on their 100Mbps package - presumably using CityFibre's 160 service).
Exactly, yes. It's ultimately the same route cause.
 
@Msh
"from what I have heard they tend to have pretty generous margins on their backhaul."

Ah, OK. I was getting the impression that congestion on the backhaul could be an issue.
I have read elsewhere that some "cheaper" ISPs save money by under provisioning their backhaul circuits.


"Yep, everything from here goes via London. It doesn't head North."

Roughly where are you located please?

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