Zen Internet Prep UK Launch of 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps Broadband
In an expected development, broadband ISP Zen Internet has confirmed that they’re “working towards” launching packages based off Openreach’s latest 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) products in the “coming months“, with some customers being told by the provider’s support teams to expect this in “April/May“.
Openreach recently confirmed that their two new multi-Gigabit tiers would be officially launched from 1st April 2024 (summary) and thus it certainly wouldn’t come as a surprise to see Zen Internet following this with their own products. We’re also expecting other providers to do something similar, although so far EE is one of the only ISPs with a package (1.6Gbps) that you can actually buy.
Head of Product at Zen Internet, Lee Houston, told ISPreview: “Zen is a pioneer in ultrafast and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband and we strive to deliver the latest innovations to our customers. We’re always exploring how we can enhance our product portfolio to benefit all our customer sets – that’s consumers, small businesses, large enterprises and the channel. As such we are actively working towards delivering the latest Openreach ‘multi-Gb’ products in the coming months.”
Zen also sell broadband packages over CityFibre’s network, which has separately launched their own 1.2Gbps and even 2.5Gbps tiers. But at present it’s not clear when Zen might introduce packages for these.
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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Are the slower speeds going to get dropped?
With all these bigger than gigabit speeds, I’d like to think it would in time.
Why would they do that? Sure, if the price of the 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps or even the 1Gbps services went down to match the slower speeds, then fine.
A lot of people are happy with slower speeds and paying a lower price. i see that Zen is 100Mbps minimum for £35, should do a lower speed for less money.
But then i suppose Zen is going after a different market than other providers.
Aquiss recently dropped their 40M FTTP package – probably because the Openreach regulated 40M product is actually slightly *more* expensive at wholesale than either 80M or 115M, once Equinox pricing is taken into account.
https://www.openreach.com/content/dam/openreach/openreach-dam-files/documents/Equinox-pricing-model-for-Full-Fibre-Broadband-from-April-24-online.pdf
I hope not, some of us are perfectly happy with a 40/10 FTTP package and the corresponding pricing.
40M is already costs more via equinox than 80M/115M:
https://www.openreach.com/content/dam/openreach/openreach-dam-files/documents/Equinox-pricing-model-for-Full-Fibre-Broadband-Apr-23%E2%80%93Mar-24-online.pdf
(Prices as of April last year)
Indeed, the slower speeds should be dropped, but price tiers pinned as appropriate. If you want 40Mbps then stick with FTTC forever, I guess?
Possibly. The reason those other tiers will stick around is that many of the legacy ISPs have cost structures that are built around exploiting 40Mb/s and aren’t easily adaptable to higher data rate services.
@NE555, if FTTp is already at the premises and the provider supplies a faster speed for the same price as the slower one, then that is fine. the problem is when they drop the lower speeds and then the user have to pay more to get a higher speed service they did not really want.
More or less what is going to happen to me in a few months time. I changed to FTTP as it was less price wise than I could get with the FTTC provider i was with at the time, at the end of my contract, the price will increase from just under £25 for 500Mb/s to just under £35 a month, I could drop to the slower 150Mb/s speed which is just Under £30 a month.
There is not really that much around that is much cheaper, and I don’t really want to go through the hassle of getting another fibre network connected. Since most of the larger ISPs will push me to use FTTP as we also got openreach FTTP here, I don’t have a lot of choices.
Either stay with Zzoomm and lower down to 150Mb/s or look at something like now broadband whihc still offer a 36Mb/s on FTTC at £24 a month.
But is it worth it to save £5.96 a month?
I don;lt need and have never needed anything faster than the 36Mb/s speed I hgad with plusnet and if they gave me a good offer and stopped pushing me to FTTP I would still be with them
Really wish zen would stop using PPPoE, this is going to be challenging when paired with 1.8gbps.
They need to realise the benefit of having their own backhaul
You don’t have a choice on the Openreach network but to use PPPoE do you?
@Craig, Sky and TalkTalk don’t use PPPoE
@James is that not due to them using VULA compared to Zen taking the wholesale product? Because of Sky / TalkTalk having LLUed most of the exchanges in the copper days so having backhaul into each?
Zen have their own equipment in 700 Openreach exchanges to my knowledge.
Openreach support both DHCP and PPPoE. It’s entirely up to the ISP whether they want to support both as it’s due to their infrastructure (BNG and CPE). Changing from PPPoE to DHCP isn’t exactly straightforward as you have both the network and system stacks to change. My understanding is TallkTalk have recently rolled out changes that will support both PPPoE and DHCP so it’s a customer choice. I wish others would do the same.
@Craig, as @BigDave said, see: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/12/broadband-isp-zen-internet-complete-uk-exchange-rollout-project.html
@Jon Motsom, this is what I assumed was the issue, being able to support the minority of customers/exchanges using BTW, and therefore needing a single (PPPoE) approach for both platforms. Being able to support both is exactly what they need!
isn’t this only a “challenge” when paired with inadequate CPE?
It tends to only come up when people are talking about wanting to use a BSD-based router. You can have a bundled Technicolor router pushing over a gigabit each way with PPPoE and the network supports baby jumbo frames so there doesn’t have to be any impact on throughput. The focus needs to be on improving PPPoE code in the CPE, or in a pinch you could terminate PPPoE on a Mikrotik device and have your ISP route an additional /30 block to you which can then be configured on the LAN side of the Mikrotik so your pfSense router can have a DHCP WAN.
that’s what I was thinking. There are ISPs around the world that do much faster speeds over PPPoE, with much cheaper equipment than the “enthusiasts” are using.
Must be embarrassing to see that a device that likely costs less than $100 at volume, and able to use their SoC vendor’s hardware acceleration features, is soundly beating people who think they need an 8 core PC and expensive set of ethernet cards to get anywhere close!
BT/EE also seems confident that their 1.8Gbps service will work with their new router, though you’d have to achieve that with multiple concurrent client devices as there’s no 2.5G LAN.
It isn’t really an issue and needs a fair amount of work to support both. There’s not just the network but also provisioning and internal systems.
No business case to spend the money as a priority. It’ll happen when they’ve the resources and inclination. 8 bytes a packet of extra overhead isn’t a deal breaker.
They are launching CityFibre multi-gig around the same time
How do you know this?
Yup, they already offer CityFibre based 1GBbps access. My friend has got one of the lower tiers and it goes like greased lightning, symmetric, of course.
fsociety3765 by knowing people
fsociety some of us work for Zen and may know that they’re working on this with Cityfibre and Openreach.
Also, EERO devices in testing
So what’s the story then?
I’m currently a Zen customer on the 900Mb service via CityFibre. Yayzi or whatever they’re called recently started offering the 2+Gb services on CityFibre in my postcode. Naturally, I want to upgrade but I have asked Zen CS twice now and both times they have told me they have plans to offer these services at all, despite it be available to me.
@fsociety3765 customers services staff are usually not told until imminent launch, this is kept to those in the back making decisions and testing etc so this is why you are told nothing.
You’ll have to wait until it’s actually launched, but yes Multi-gig is coming soon from Zen and a few other providers
@Mark, any news on BTWholesale supporting the 1.2/1.8 tiers? Or any pricing? We’re only 2 weeks from openreach’s launch date, and without BTW the vast majority of ISPs wont be able to offer any packages at those speeds.
What kind of delay has there historically been between a new openreach speed tier launch and a corresponding BTW product?
It’s in talks at BT Wholesale, but I’m unaware of pricing at all.
The official line has always been that BT effectively buys btwholesale services, yet they are offering 1.8/1.1G products retail before BTW…
BT retail are large enough to be able to buy GEA services direct from Openreach
Everyone can rule Sky out already. Their new router only supports speeds up to 976mbps due to poor planning. And there won’t be a major revision till 2027.
Don’t forget they removed 900 package because they couldn’t handle it and needed to upgrade parts of their network
Pricing is almost double then i.e. Vodafone, is quality/performance really double?
I called them last week to see when I could upgrade, the person I spoke to had no idea about the 1.2/1.8gbp rollout.
Glad to read this though, currently rolling out Cat6 around my house along with 2.5gbe switches
At least Zen let customers use their own kit, unlike Sky who make you “hack” your network to get it working.
My area is currently being upgraded by Nexfibre. The fact that Zen or other providers can’t offer FTTP in my area is the only reason I’m close to switching. 40 mpbs is starting to become a minimum standard in my opinion.
So you’re going to choose Virgin simply because it’s delivered via XGS-PON?
I’d wait until they wholesale it next year myself
I will be ordering 1.8gbps…
Okay good. I won’t.
XGS seems to be the most triggered, depressed person on this site
Must be jealousy.
I’ll also be ordering as soon as it’s available. I do need to upgrade my kit as it’s all 1gbit. I was thinking of a bpi-r4 running openwrt with their wifi 7 module as a router/AP, then an 8 port 10gbit switch possibly from mikrotik. 10gbit + openwrt seems like a rare combo at the moment.
not really my 10Gbps connection would piss all over your 8Gbps YouFibre residential crap.
That’s if you actually had it.
How’s it going Pete? You well?
I confirm Carl has 8,000 Mbps from YouFibre
Guess the commercial targeting has been pretty accurate, Jeremy: that gentleman is not in an area you cover and the advertising accordingly hasn’t been shown.
Main ad is over 152k views now, with the shorts adding another 83k. When are we doing the next ones? 🙂
Soon 🙂 Carl 2.0
Currently with Zen, but can’t get FTTP yet and probably not until 2026.
Zzoomm fibre currently being installed in area and waiting to go live.
Due to how slow OpenReach are progressing with the rollout, I may have to switch to get higher speeds.
I have been with ZZoomm since July last year and while there were a few problems at the start, Zzoomm seemed to have sorted them out, The service itself is good now and reliable and have been for months. The one problem with Zzoomm is their router, it is awful, even the newer one, but then if you are going for the 1Gb or above service, they do supply a different router.
I have the 500Mb/s service and I use my own TPlink route.
I am happy with the service, it is the fact I have been pushed into a service I don’t really need that annoys me.
Just moved to Zzoomm from EE full fibre 900 package today. Was surprised when I had my install date on a Sunday. But 1,050Mbps download and 1,138Mbps upload is crazy fast for £39.95 a month. Only reason I moved is because EE is riddled with bugs with the EE app. I’ve had nothing but issues since I joined them last October. The app got an update on iOS about 3 weeks ago, every time you used the WiFi controls it would reboot the EE router. Sadly new EE just isn’t ready for prime time, felt like a paid beta tester since I joined them. So was allowed to leave free of charge, so went with Zzoomm and so far it’s crazy fast. Just wished EE/BT did symmetrical speeds.
@Michael, EE app, What has an App have to do with your home broadband?
@Ad47uk everything lol, parental control, billing EE’s new WiFi enhancer setting plus WiFi controls. The app is a major part of the service you buy. It’s completely broken on EE, but again you wouldn’t understand as your not with them and seen all the issues with the EE app I’ve had. Like I said using the app would disconnect my full fibre connection every single time without fail. So glad I got out when I did.
presume@Michael, so what happens if you don’t have a smartphone? I presume you can access all those functions from a computer browser. My router has an app called tether, i can muck around with the Wi-fi settings, look at what devices are connected to the router and there is some extra security that I could pay for called home shield, but that is from TP link. I have it on the phone, but I only use it now and again to check the status.
I have never been with a ISP that has an App, but then I was with the same ISP for over 9 years and as far as I know Plusnet don’t have an App, but I could be wrong.
Why do you use the app if it is that bad?
@Ad47uk The EE smart hub plus on their full fibre packages are locked down completely. All the WiFi controls for the router is done through their new EE app. It’s a complete nightmare. But again you wouldn’t know as your with Zzoomm. Just take a look on the EE forum everyone is complaining about the EE app WiFi controls being completely broken. It’s been like it for 5 months since new EE launched I joined them. I was an early adopter switching from BT, but I’m happy now with Zzoomm on their 1gig package.
@Michael, I know a couple of people on EE, but not really taken much notice, I know more people using BT, I don’t know if BT has a App, I presume they do.
You said on an earlier post you wished EE/BT did symmetrical speeds, why when you can get Zzoomm? The main problem with Zzoomm is the router, so many people complain about it, that is the Icotera one for the slower speeds. I think they use something different for 1Gb/s and above. I use a TPlink router and the Icotera router is stuck in a box.
I am happy with Zzoomm now they have sorted out the problems they had.
Not much to complain about when you can get 500Mbps for less than £30 quid, i would have thought
It will go up to £34.95 at the end of my contract, 150Mb/s is below £30 at proper prices. I had an offer of 500Mb/s for £24.95 for £12 months. I will probably knock it down to 150Mb/s, that is, if I don’t go back to FTTC.
Don’t be silly – FTTC will go away one day
@Cognizant, I never said it would not, Openreach will make sure it does as they together of Ofcom and other providers will push people to FTTP. All fine as long as they don’t increase the price, the other problem is people in rented accommodation, some landlords can get a bit funny about having FTTP installed in some places.
@Ad47uk: Just a bit of info you may be interested in. Now Broadband have started recently to provide 100Mbps FTTP service for £24, on a 18 Month contract. Applying through Now, you will be redirected to the Sky Broadband site to complete the transaction. It’s worth remembering when an exchange area reaches 75% FTTP, it becomes Stop Sell, and then ADSL and FTTC Broadband are no longer available to the customer. Worth looking into if you don’t want or need high speeds, especially when you would be happy with 40Mbps for the same price.
I suppose some of the Altnets are trying to differentiate themselves by offering higher speeds. It is quite a niche market at present though with the average punter not really bothered about higher speeds
As long as Netflix, iPlayer work without buffering most people don’t care what it is. It’s taken Openreach 2 1/2 years to get close to 50% take up in our street and until January they were the only supplier. Swish have been live for a couple of months but so far I can’t see a single connected customer.
I am already on FTTP, I am using an Altnet called Zzoomm, I was with Plusnet for nearly 10 years, and they could not give me a decent offer on FTTC and they wanted me to sign up for a 24-month contract. I even phoned plusnet up to see what they could offer, but all he was doing was pushing me towards FTTP, he did not like it when I said that I could get a better deal on a better network with Zzoomm and only a 12-month contract. Never heard of them he said, we use Openreach network and went on about why I should stay on the openreach network, because they are the largest and most reliable.
Zzoomm sent me a flyer offering me 500Mb/s for under £25 for a 12-month contract. Made sense to go for it, even if I don’t need the speed.
I can’t be bothered to have another FTTP network installed, more cables, having to be here for the installation and to be honest, if I am going back to 36Mb/s I may as well use the FTTC system which is still up and running here, and we have not got to the 75% FTTP coverage yet and even if we do, they have to give 12 months notice.
Like Big Dave, as long as I can stream, I don’t use Iplayer, but I do use others, listen to music via my Echo units, able to download books to my Kobo, keep my smart home devices working and able to download and upload some stuff from the computers, I am finbe even with slower speeds.
Going from 36Mb/s to 500Mb.s have not really made any difference, most of the time I don’t notice. When I download or upload files I do, I redid the game’s disk on my PC, instead of taking days, it took hours. I must make a backup, be even quicker.
But downloading software it makes little difference, it will be few seconds instead of a couple of minutes.
If Zzoomm said they would give me 50Mb/s for £25 I would take it. If I did not rely so much on broadband these days I drop it
What’s the reason for the 12 month contract requirement? As you’ve found the majority of the good offers are on 24 month contracts these days. Your current ISP may still come through with a decent renewal offer in any case.
@Chris W, I don’t like long contracts, 18 months I will cope with, but I will not go for a 24-month one. For a start with all this CPI Plus 3.9% rubbish, you are stuck for 24 months , so the price will rise twice and you have no control. At least with 12 months or even 18 months, you don’t have to wait so long to change or try and do a deal.
I think broadband is too expensive anyway, the problem now is that we are stuck with it, or most of us are.
I gave up mobile phone contracts a few years ago, monthly sim only now, such a shame can;lt do the same thing with home broadband. I only do contracts if I really have to.
Massive overkill in speed . 100% wouldn’t even notice that sort of speed on comparison .
I would not say 100%, but a fair few would not, but then most people don’t notice the difference between 36Mb/s which is the low end of FTTC and something like 100Mb/s or even 1Gb/s
Unless they are moving huge files a lot, or they have a load of people in the house streaming 4K and playing games all at the same time, higher speed will make little difference., Just marketing, making people think they need it.
It’s going to be geared towards a household of heavy users or individuals who need to fastest speeds.
But yes, realistically the sweet spot is probably 500Mbps up/down even for those uploading/downloading a lot of files, games etc or streaming, and I say that as a 1Gbps user. I can probably count on one hand the number of sites/services that max out my connection but it’s still very useful when they do.
For most people it’s the wifi speeds within the property that are the real bottle neck.
What an insightful post.
Clearly you know 100% of use cases across millions of consumers.
@Big Dave, you got it, certainly with older devices. My Mac will connect to the internet at just over 250Mb/s if I use Wi-Fi, my phone hits 100 if I am in the same room as the router. Using Ethernet my Mac does over 520Mb/s, which is more than what I pay for.
On Zzoomm Facebook page people complain about speed and when asked how they are connecting they say Wi-Fi. I connect everything I can via Ethernet, even my printer. I know my printer don’t need high speed, but it is more reliable.
My partner until recently had 1Gb broadband and even with the computer on Ethernet, speed tests was never 1Gb, close, but never there. Overheads keep the speed below, unless you have a 2.5 or above lan. If she used the laptop on Wi-Fi, lucky to get 200Mb/s, which is why she went down to a lower speed. Internet wise.
The best way to connect to a router is a cable.
@Ad47uk: You are very lucky indeed to be in an area where you can choose to have FTTC or FTTP, not Stop Sell, in fact you seem to have all the options here. The offer you have said you received at the end of your present contract of 24.95 for 500Mbps is a very good one, in fact a no brainer for most. I’m at a loss as to why you would even consider going back to FTTC, and probably pay around the same price or more, on a less reliable part copper line, unless you are are basing your judgment totally on price above all else!
I pay £24.95 now for 500Mb/s, my contract ends in July and the price will go to £34.95, I have to decide what to do, either go down to 150Mb/s at £29.95 or change back to a FTTC provider like now broadband £25 for 36Mb/s. The only problem with that is that I will be back on an openreach network and I hate Openreach.
Yes, we are lucky that we have the choice, to be honest I am shocked we have FTTP by openreach and Zzoomm, this city is normally so far behind all the others. I reckon some brown envelopes have passed hands somewhere.
I am looking at price, as I said before I don’t need super-duper high speed, I only changed from Plusnet FTTC because of price, if Plusnet had offered me an 18 months contract on FTTC for a decent price I doubt I would have changed to FTTP in the first place.
@Ad47uk: Sorry if I have got it wrong, just trying to be helpful. Initially I was explaining how Now Broadband are doing 100Mbps FTTP for £24 at the moment, but that would be on the Openreach Network, which I know you don’t like, but Plusnet who you were happy to be with at one stage, are also on Openreach. I’ve noticed lately that FTTC contracts can sometimes attract a higher price now compared to FTTP, so really, it boils down too, ” you pays your money and makes your choice” or vice versa.
@Fibre Scriber, No worries. 🙂
I did hear about Now broadband doing FTTP, but as been said they for some reason go via sky, yes I know Now is owned by sky, but never had to go through the sky website before. The price is good, but the price will still change mid-contract and then at the end of the contract will almost double. With their FTTC service, while the price may increase a bit during the contract which is only 12 months, it is not going to go almost twice the price at the end of the contract.
So while the FTTP looks good, it may not be so good in the end.
I had no choice about being on the Openreach network as that is all we had until December 2022 and I was still in contract until June last year. A few years ago, 2013 to be exact, I changed to a wireless network that a local company started up. They put an aerial on my roof, I call it an aerial, but it’s more than that as it had power supplied to it via PoE and connected to a router. Anyway, they had something on our cathedral, in fact they used churches around the city and in the countryside to try and give people decent broadband. This was a time when we had ADSL and for many people the quality of broadband was not great, I could only get 3Mb/s if I was lucky, with this wireless system I was getting 10 Mb/s. So I got off the Openreach network then.
Sadly the company could not cope with the amount of users and as time went on, speed started to drop, sometimes worse than when I was on ADSL.
The contract was 2 years, so I was stuck in contract and even if I moved, it would be back to ADSL which, was no better, but it was cheaper.
Anyway, buy the time my contract came to the end we had FTTC here, while I did not really want to go back onto Openreach network, I decided it was for the best, I also needed to move quickly and Plusnet was the only ISP that could connect me quickly for a decent price. So that is why I ended up on Plusnet and I did plan to change after 18 months, but the service was fine, which is why I stayed for so long.
The Wireless network company kept going for about another six months and then gave up, broadband was not their thing anyway, they do payment cards and payment services. They just wanted to get better broadband for people and fair play for them trying, but maybe if they could have sorted out their service and FTTC did not come they may have kept going. The equipment is still on the roof of my house, they never collected it.
So I did jump off the Openreach network, but had to jump back on.
You are right about FTTC being sold for a higher price than FTTP, certainly in places where FTTP is available, and a lot of providers will not even display FTTC when doing checks. All to get people to jump to FTTP. My main problem with FTTP is upselling, I know people who are on FTTP using different providers, and they say they get a fair amount of emails trying to get them to go to a faster speed, they are on Vodafone, BT, one is on Sky. I said they need to change their communication preferences if they can, and tell the providers not to contact them to sell stuff.
That is one thing about ZZoomm so far, they have not contacted me to try and get me to go to a faster speed.
This one ended up pretty heavily derailed.
Always remember at school when a sentence/message was given to the first pupil in the class and passed round the room to the last of 36, bore no resemblance to the original input.
Still it was good to hear AD’s thoughts on available products for the 300th time just in case anyone had forgotten.
Let’s hope Zen provides hardware that actually allows users to access the 1.8Gbps service. EE launched this service in 2023, but it’s router only has 1Gbps ethernet ports, so it’s impossible to benefit from the line speed unless you buy your own hardware. I hope that Zen will take a more sensible approach and supply hardware with 2.5Gbps ports.
Two months later and this trail has gone very cold.. Perhaps its just going to be EE with these higher speeds!