Octaplus Mistake Cuts Off Some Former ZYBRE CityFibre Broadband Customers UPDATE2
Broadband ISP Octaplus Networks has apologised after they left some customers on CityFibre’s UK full fibre (FTTP) network, specifically those who live in Chester and were being migrated from troubled provider ZYBRE (Air Broadband), without internet access due to an “unfortunate error” related to network availability.
“We have now been completely cut off from broadband and VOIP. CityFibre are silent. Horrible situation,” said one former ZYBRE/AirBB customer on Friday. “Octaplus tried to migrate my service on Friday but instead left me cut off for four days and counting,” added another. Both were due to be migrated to Octaplus at the end of last week, following an announcement earlier in the month (here).
As if those impacted by the fallout from the ZYBRE/AirBB situation haven’t already suffered enough, now they have another headache to worry about. The latest situation seems to have occurred after Octaplus “mistakenly sent out” an email to customers in Chester last week, which indicated that they would be migrating people in that area. But instead, those impacted have been cut off from their home internet connection since Friday.
The issue appears to have stemmed from the fact that Octaplus hasn’t made their broadband services available across CityFibre’s new network in the Cathedral City yet.
Octaplus’ Customer Email
Transitioning from Zybre to Octaplus
Important Service Migration: CHESTER ONLY
Dear Valued Customers,
We hope this email finds you well. We are writing to address an unfortunate error that occurred earlier this week regarding service availability in Chester. Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
It has come to our attention that an email was mistakenly sent out to customers in Chester, indicating that we would be connecting customers in that area. We would like to clarify that this information is incorrect as we do not currently have a presence or infrastructure in Chester to provide our services.
We understand that this may have raised expectations for our customers in Chester. We deeply regret any disappointment or inconvenience this may have caused.
We value the trust you have placed in our company, and we want to assure you that we are committed to providing exceptional service to all our customers. However, at this time, we are unable to extend our services to Chester due to infrastructural constraints. We apologize for any misunderstanding and assure you that we are actively exploring opportunities to expand our reach in the future.
To get connected to a different provider kindly visit www.cityfibre.com
They will be happy to assist you and provide any necessary clarification.
Once again, we sincerely apologise for the miscommunication. We greatly appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to rectify this situation. We remain committed to serving you and providing the best possible service.
Thank you for your continued support.
Warm regards,
Team Octaplus
The fact that all of this occurred right before the bank holiday weekend certainly won’t have helped, since those impacted appear to have struggled to get any support for their situation and have thus been left offline. We are currently querying the situation with CityFibre, which will hopefully be able to provide some support to those who need to find an alternative ISP.
UPDATE 31st May 2023 @ 7:47am
We’ve had a comment from CityFibre, which came in last night.
A Spokesperson for CityFibre said:
“A small number of former Zybre/Air Broadband customers in Chester can no longer access their broadband service. We’d like to reassure them that signing up to a new Internet Service Provider is straightforward. Just visit www.cityfibre.com (https://www.cityfibre.com) and check your postcode to find an alternative ISP and get services back up and running.”
The catch here, according to some of those affected, is that the only other option returned for Chester is currently TalkTalk, and yet they have been declining to take over such lines as they’re still marked as active (despite not working since Friday). We have highlighted this to CityFibre. To be fair, we can understand TalkTalk’s position here, since there are measures in place to prevent lines from being SLAMMED (i.e. switched without consent).
UPDATE 1st June 2023 @ 10:23am
We are still awaiting some clarification from CityFibre on the issues that those affected are experiencing in trying to escape their predicament. But feedback from customers suggests that TalkTalk’s system can’t currently recognise the line code for affected lines (RFS3), which stops them from accepting the migration requests.
Apparently, CityFibre needs to manually change this for every affected property to RFS1 and TalkTalk also need to make some adjustments, which is a laborious task as there are said to be quite a few properties involved. The work could take a few more days to complete. Meanwhile, we continue to await CityFibre’s official response to our follow-up queries.
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 and Linkedin.
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Shambles. This isn’t going to do Cityfibre any favours as it’ll put people off going with a smaller ISP on their network. Will benefit people like zen/vodafone though you’d think (if it hasn’t put them off completely)
Probably a bigger issue for Octaplus, since CityFibre has a different level of responsibility as the underlying wholesale provider. The main contractual responsibility rests, first and foremost, with the retail ISP to provide direct customer support and solutions. But this is a bit of an unusual situation, as I’m not even sure if the ‘Supplier of Last Resort’ process applies here.
It certainly raises questions about CityFibre’s National Access product. Is it too expensive? Too hard to integrate. Because (Vodafone rolling exclusivity aside), it “should” be easy for any CityFibre ISP to offer their services nationally.
It’s more it’ll put people off going back to a cityfibre-based provider if they have a choice. I doubt it’s an issue with the product, just the maturity of the smaller ISPs setting it up / moving over.
You’d think they’d have checked they had coverage for the area first, or from CF’s point of view carved up their user base over multiple small ISPs checking they could serve the area first. Or have Voda as the “last resort” type provider and have them as a default fall back if a smaller ISP can’t take over.
Either way – lessons need to be learnt. More ISPs will go to the wall and it needs to be smoother, else people won’t take a punt on the smaller providers.
Octaplus appear to be taking the CityFibre national service based on the press release from when they launched.
https://cityfibre.com/news/octaplus-joins-cityfibres-network-offering-full-fibre-broadband-services-nationwide
I suspect the issue here is that Chester is not yet live on their national product?
Matt: “else people won’t take a punt on the smaller providers”
I suspect you’re right, but it’s a shame that is so. I’ve worked for several very large “customer service” businesses, and I can say with confidence that the crown for poor customer service and IT-related fiascos is held by large ISPs by a compelling margin.
As a recent refugee from VM, now with one of our smallest ISPs, it would take something very, very bad indeed to make me want to conduct business with any large ISP.
“We have now been completely cut off from broadband and VOIP. CityFibre are silent…”
Not a great advert.
No comment from Cityfibre? Doesn’t look good.
Cityfibre only supply the fibre itself like Openreach and it falls solely to the responsibility of Octaplus to resolve as itll be their RADIUS and core equipment.
But Cityfibre are blank marketing their catchment area saying “go to our site” and see what FTTP we can provide. So the marketing from Cityfibre implies that they are involved in some form.
So people assume Cityfibre are the go to people and that means that when issues occur, there is a bigger expectation on Cityfibre to help sort things out.
Cityfibre are great at shouting about their product and telling people where to go to join their network, but when things go wrong they’re nowhere to be seen.
By the way, obviously there’s two different Sam’s on here. Apologies!
@occasionally factual
How’s that any different from Openreach? They are just a wholesale provider like Cityfibre
This is shocking- Cityfibre have told me Talktalk have become the ISP and given me a number. Talktalk are denying it. Why haven’t Cityfibre kept the provision running until this is all sorted. Been a mess from the moment I was told I was switching from Airbroadband to Zybre. Left messages with lovely and sympathetic call centre but no response from Cityfibre.
Cityfibre are not your ISP. They only provide part of your service in Chester and that’s still working. Your ISP is Octaplus/Zybre and their bit is broken.
This was most likely due to Zybre dropping off the internet on the Friday before the bank holiday weekend. Their final active transit provider (Cogent) appeared to stop providing Zybre with transit sometime during the morning of that Friday (I imagine due to non-payment, which wouldn’t surprise given the state of Zybre!) All IP ranges that were ex-Air Broadband (AS204269) would have stopped functioning immediately.
It’s all very well CityFibre/Octaplus telling us to switch provider – the only other option in Chester is TalkTalk but they either can’t or won’t take over if you have an active connection which, despite being offline since Friday, we apparently have. I’ve been trying to switch for 3 months now!
What an utter mess.
Told to go to Talk Talk but they won’t accept you?
Go out and buy a 4G/5G router and SIM card so at least you have an internet connection.
Come on Cityfibre, get it sorted, this is an absolute shambles.
Cityfibre are not the ISP. Your problem is with Octaplus who’ve messed up here and broken your service.
@Anon
With Openreach I’m pretty sure you can get a new ISP to just take over and deal with the cancellation charges etc later.
Why not with CityFibre?
With situations like this occuring there’s no wonder people are more inclined to stick with BT Openreach or Virgin Media and hence the Altnets are struggling with poor take up.
I was proud to move away from BT being the big fish they are.
Moved straight back! Lower upload speed granted but atleast it’s not gone offline and I’ve got what I’m paying for! Better the devil you know in this situation.
I can confirm that the City Fibre “statement” is complete and utter garbage and a total insult to those affected.
Talk Talk still won’t take on my account even though City Fibre claim that our line has been available to them since Tuesday afternoon!
City Fibre has opened a complaint file and has promised to keep me updated. But as others have pointed out, “updates” are totally non existent!
I’m still waiting for CityFibre to call me back since April after numerous calls to them about failed takeovers and conflicting advice.
They are useless, it’s impossible to speak to anybody that can actually action anything, they told me “We’re happy to seize the line”.. still waiting. Back with BT.
Screw CityFibre (I’m aware they didn’t initiate this fiasco, but look at the trouble people are having with switching even with providers that aren’t rubbish Air/ZYBRE.)
Only way I’d recommend them is if it was an ISP like Voda and the person planned to stay with them forever (what an awful prospect).
For goodness sake, this has gone on long enough now, someone take ownership of the problem and fix it!
“It’s not us, it’s them” doesn’t help people.
When I emailed on Friday when we was taken off – I had a reply back from Zybree saying I hadn’t paid for 2 months. they sent me an invoice for £90 to pay and said I would be switched back on as soon as I paid. This didn’t happen and I checked my account and realised I had already paid a few weeks ago! So they lied to me to get more money – knowing I wouldn’t be back online!!! I am really angry about this as they will not reply to any email or phone calls.
It’s all Cityfibre. They’re a nightmare. This location isn’t on national. CF are a shit show and will hopefully go under.
Looks like the Zybre website has been updated to say they aren’t taking on anymore new customers due to pressures they’ve not been able to overcome. Seems they may be coming to a close… https://www.zybre.co.uk/
TalkTalk finally accepted my order last week for full fibre 900. They have now cancelled my order because they say full fibre is not available in my area. City Fibre now investigating again. Unbelievable.