On 03/05/2023 13:15, Graham J wrote:
> Woody wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> Just a word of warning. If you upgrade to FTTP with Zen you may well
>> have to start a new contract which means that if you are on the 'never
>> see a price rise' T&C you may well loose it. If you have mail through
>> Zen you will likely loose that as well as they no longer support mail
>> which means you will either have to change your mail to gmail or hotmail
>> or whatever, or find another organisation that can handle your mail for
>> you.
>
> [snip]
>
> In February I planned to port my landline to Voipfone. I then had FTTC
> and voice from Zen. Voipfone were very clear that any attempt to port
> the landline to them would result in cessation of the associated FTTC
> service. It might then have been possible to get a new service from
> Zen, using the same username and IP address; but I didn't ask.
>
> By happy coincidence Zen announced that they could provide FTTP.
>
> So I ordered a completely new FTTP service. This came with a new Zen
> username. I ordered through my Zen Portal, which showed that I would
> get a new email address, web space and FTP service. However, Zen admit
> that their portal lies: none of this is true. They haven't issued new
> email addreses etc with any new broadband services for over a year.
> Which is not a problem for me because I have my emails hosted elsewhere,
> and didn't require the webspace or FTP.
>
> Once FTTP was installed and working, I then ported my landline to
> Voipfone, thereby cancelling the old FTTC service as well.

Sorry, but I'm not clear if you still have (or were offered by Zen that
you could keep it) your old zen email address or that it's gone when you
upgraded Zen's FTTC to FTTP.

--

Jeff

On 03/05/2023 17:21, Tweed wrote:
> Mark Carver <mark.carver@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 03/05/2023 13:00, Andy Burns wrote:
>>> Jeff Layman wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't need FTTP speeds, as the current FTTC I have is quite adequate.
>>> Same here, very happy with VDSL, there is a virgin fibre "toby" at the
>>> end of my drive, but I have no intention of using it ...
>>>
>> +1
>>
>> Our allocated Virgin Toby 'broke up' due to traffic (it was in the road)
>> generating a pothole, which Hampshire Highways then came along and
>> filled in with a big splurge of tarmac.
>>
>> Anyway, bargepoles and all that....
>>
>> Despite all the surrounding roads having Oprenreach fibre being pulled
>> recently, and dist boxes appearing on telegraph poles, Openreach emailed
>> me last month, to say we are not part of their plan for FTTP roll out.
>> So I'll have to make to with that 84m long bit of copper to the cabinet
>> for some time more......
>>
> You might want to make enquiries with OR. Apparently they did a mistaken
> mass emailing last month incorrectly stating properties were out of scope.
>
I've had enough trying to find out, and second guess what their plans
are. I remember all this from FTTC back in 2009, no plans apparently,
then all of a sudden a cabinet appeared and hey presto.

Nothing is going to happen, until it actually does !

Jeff Layman wrote:

[snip]

>
> Sorry, but I'm not clear if you still have (or were offered by Zen that
> you could keep it) your old zen email address or that it's gone when you
> upgraded Zen's FTTC to FTTP.
>

I didn't upgrade. I bought a completely new FTTP service which did not
come with an email address.

I then cancelled the old FTTC service (by the indirect process of
porting its landline number to Voipfone). *** Consequently I lost my
old Zen email address ***.

However:

Since then Zen have offered another user I know of the choice betweeen
(a) broadband only; or (b) broadband with Digital Voice.

The "broadband only" option converts the service to SOGEA, and cancels
the landline number. Further, Voipfone tell me they can now retrieve a
cancelled landline number up to 30 days after it has been disconnected.
This is clearly a new policy.

Had this choice been available to me I would have taken it, and later
regraded my FTTC service to FTTP.

--
Graham J

On 03/05/2023 12:56, Java Jive wrote:
> So probably a situation where rural locations will lose out yet again.

They will actually get upgraded (if that is the correct description?) first.

On 03/05/2023 15:41, Theo wrote:
>
> Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> On 03/05/2023 12:01, Theo wrote:
>>>
>>> I suspect they might leave this as 'too hard' for now, and come back to it
>>> after the bulk of other people are transitioned.
>>
>> So probably a situation where rural locations will lose out yet again.
>
> I don't see how the situation of having broadband and phone from different
> companies has anything to do with being rural or urban. It (WLR3) was a
> product popular ~10-15 years ago that some people have stuck with, while
> others have not.

Perhaps I should have clarified that I was talking about rural
communications generally, not specifically about this problem.
Hands-off-com never seem to require that rural locations get a decent
service level from any new technology.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 04/05/2023 12:31, MB wrote:
>
> On 03/05/2023 12:56, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> So probably a situation where rural locations will lose out yet again.
>
> They will actually get upgraded (if that is the correct description?)
> first.

Do you have any evidence for that claim? If so, it would have been nice
to see it. However, I was actually speaking generally, see my reply to
Theo.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

Java Jive wrote:
> On 04/05/2023 12:31, MB wrote:
>>
>> On 03/05/2023 12:56, Java Jive wrote:
>>>
>>> So probably a situation where rural locations will lose out yet again.
>>
>> They will actually get upgraded (if that is the correct description?)
>> first.
>
> Do you have any evidence for that claim?  If so, it would have been nice
> to see it.  However, I was actually speaking generally, see my reply to
> Theo.
>

I live in a small village, about 150 houses, about 10km from Thetford in
Norfolk. So not very rural, really.

Slow ADSL arrived in 2005. Prior to that I had ISDN2e in the form of
BT's Home Highway.

FTTC arrived October 2018 - much later than many towns and villages in
Norfolk.

About 2019 County Broadband was trying to drum up business for their
Fibre & VoIP product. Since then there has been sporadic work
installing green plastic pipes and some overhead fibres. This may have
prompted Openreach ...

From about January this year Openreach have been very active installing
overhead fibre on their existing telephone poles. I ordered FTTP from
Zen on 13/02/2023 which was installed on 06/03/2023.

Friends around the country who had FTTC long before me have yet to be
offered FTTP.

--
Graham J

On 04/05/2023 18:10, Graham J wrote:
>
> I live in a small village, about 150 houses, about 10km from Thetford in
> Norfolk.  So not very rural, really.
>
> Slow ADSL arrived in 2005.  Prior to that I had ISDN2e in the form of
> BT's Home Highway.
>
> FTTC arrived October 2018 - much later than many towns and villages in
> Norfolk.
>
> About 2019 County Broadband was trying to drum up business for their
> Fibre & VoIP product.  Since then there has been sporadic work
> installing green plastic pipes and some overhead fibres.  This may have
> prompted Openreach ...
>
> From about January this year Openreach have been very active installing
> overhead fibre on their existing telephone poles.  I ordered FTTP from
> Zen on 13/02/2023 which was installed on 06/03/2023.
>
> Friends around the country who had FTTC long before me have yet to be
> offered FTTP.

Similar story here, but without the happy ending.

I moved to this settlement of about 60+ houses along the NE shores of
Loch Shin in 2013. The nearest town is Lairg, the exchange of which is
nearly 6 miles away from me, 3.5mi from the nearest houses, 7.6mi from
the farthest. The local cabling is in an appalling state, with broken
boxes full of water, supposedly 'buried' sections of cable visible
permanently on the surface, and supposedly 'temporary' fixes also left
exposed permanently on the surface, with no attempt to bury any of it
despite multiple complaints. Needless to say, these often get damaged
by ditching and verge cutting contractors, losing part or all of the
area connectivity at one fell swoop, and putting yet another 'temporary'
join in to what is already a bird's nest arrangement of cabling. OR
engineers have told me also that much of the cabling has been fried by
lightning, and is so brittle that it breaks anew every time an engineer
tries to fix a fault.

Highest ADSL speed was and presumably still is one lucky person getting
2Mbps, but most of the rest of us had to be content with 1.5Mbps WHEN
everything was working well, which all too often it wasn't. Others out
at the far end of the settlement can't get ADSL at all.

My own landline speeds once slowed to about 0.5Mbps crawl for months on
end, and it was almost impossible to get OR to do anything about it. It
didn't matter how many times I pointed out that until a few months
previously I'd been getting 3x that, they just dismissed it as a 'long
line issue' and wouldn't fix it.

Shortly after moving in, I discovered that Lairg was about to be given
FTTC, and lobbied hard for this outlying area of about 60+ houses to be
given it at the same time, but to no avail. Later I discovered that
another round of funding had been made available, and tried again to get
the area FTTC, but, while the end nearest Lairg did get given it, 2/3rds
of the area still can't get it, and is as before. When next I tried
again, they flatly refused to implement our plan but offered us an FTTP
solution at a total cost of around £250,000, which we can't afford.

Highland Wireless have put in a system on a commercial basis, but it's
quite expensive, especially if you pay them extra to migrate your phone
number as well, or else keep on your landline.

As of some years ago now, I discontinued my landline, and use a Three
mobile connection, which is reasonably priced and pretty reliable,
certainly far more reliable than the landline ever was, but I had to
hack the router myself to support it, which is not an option for most
people.

Although after the FTTC debacle I haven't taken so much interest in what
others are experiencing, AFAICT from the relative paucity of HW dishes,
most of the rest of the area is still without decent broadband.
Certainly, if any beyond the reach of the cabinet are getting decent
broadband, it's very unlikely to be thanks to OR, far more likely a HW
or mobile connection.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 04/05/2023 20:09, Java Jive wrote:
> Similar story here, but without the happy ending.

A local BT man told me that they are planning to do the rural areas
first because there have been problems getting decent speed / connection
to many for years.

Even some Airwave sites are fed by satellite because of the lack of any
fibre and difficulty of connecting by microwave links.

On 05/05/2023 16:57, MB wrote:
>
> On 04/05/2023 20:09, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> Similar story here, but without the happy ending.
>
> A local BT man told me that they are planning to do the rural areas
> first because there have been problems getting decent speed / connection
> to many for years.
>
> Even some Airwave sites are fed by satellite because of the lack of any
> fibre and difficulty of connecting by microwave links.

Thanks for the information, but I think you will understand when I say
that I'll believe it when finally I see it!

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk