Openreach woes

atomic7431 · 9 Sep 2019 at 14:35

Placed an order last week with zen for FTTP same as what i have with BT (had to for first so many months at new address), Today the service for Zen is stated as going live, so i changed the username etc to zen and turned it on.
Nothing, it doesnt work, contacted zen and this is where it gets weird. They check the serial of the ONT box and ask me to check for port 2. The ONT box doesnt have a port 2, only a port 1. Openreach have said they activated zen services on port 2 of my ONT box, which i dont have lmao.
The port 1 is still working as expected with BT services, so im now waiting for Zen to call me back before 5pm today so i know whats happening next.
Ideally we should have had a 4 port ONT box installed to start with, but it may be that openreach configure the 1 port now for zen uses. How Openreach have activated a service to a port that doesnt exist is a mistery.

TJM · 9 Sep 2019 at 16:37

This might be a stupid question, but did you actually cancel the BT service?

atomic7431 · 9 Sep 2019 at 18:36

no i dont need to (well i have lol read end), i can have an overlap as the house should have had more than 1 port on the ONT box, the serial number says this as well. When you change provider on FTTP you could potentially have 4 services active at once lol.
I have actually cancelled the BT internet and its on its 30 day wind down.

Deleted member 77746 · 11 Sep 2019 at 08:03

Why didn’t you transfer your service? You wouldn’t have had this hassle then.

All you would have done is plug in Zens router, then away you go.

I’m really not sure why you have been told different ports on the Openreach Modem is for different providers I really don’t think this is the case at all. Your house line is either on a service provider or it isn’t.

atomic7431 · 12 Sep 2019 at 10:05

mrbell1984 said:
Why didn’t you transfer your service? You wouldn’t have had this hassle then.

All you would have done is plug in Zens router, then away you go.

I’m really not sure why you have been told different ports on the Openreach Modem is for different providers I really don’t think this is the case at all. Your house line is either on a service provider or it isn’t.

BT engineer turned up yesterday at around 2pm. Came in said yep your quite correct, replaced the ONT box with a 4 port version and plugged us into port 2, away we go.
Zen was live there and then and speeds are as i expected. Plug into port 1 and we have bt internet still, so 2 services to 1 house, as i said it could in theory be 4 services if you should wish to (not that i see why that would be required).

I was advised by zen to call bt to terminate the existing connection with them and that zen would provision there service, you have to call previous provider to cease a service unlike when you have a standard adsl service.
I had spoken to BT the previous day to cancel my sport and tv services with them as their prices had gone up, i was advised i was out of contract and so decided i would look else where for fibre as well.
When i called bt back the following day to cancel the FTTP i was advised they can only cancel 1 order at a time and i would have to wait to cancel the fibre.
I was not happy with this (didnt want to have to wait a further 30 days) and a manager agreed they could override the system once the tv service cease had ended in 30 days time instantly, so no wait time.
This means i have now got 2 services for FTTP to the house with 1 ONT box which according to Zen is quite normal and the best way to do it, this way if anything goes wrong with a new order etc you still have service with the old provider.

So for anyone who didnt know, you can have an overlap of services to guarantee no loss of service. This is to the 1 existing ONT box which has 4 ports on it.

PS. i dont use provider router, im using my Asus RT-AC5300 with Merlin firmware.

This is with slightly capped QoS which enables better bufferbloat quality.

VaderDSL · 12 Sep 2019 at 10:22

Awesome info and update atomic, cheers. I'm with Zen FTTP, any chance of a pic of your new ONT? Mine only has a single Ethernet port. Did you have to pay for the 4 port ONT and who organised it? Zen or BT?

Sorry for all the questions.

atomic7431 · 12 Sep 2019 at 11:23

VaderDSL said:
Awesome info and update atomic, cheers. I'm with Zen FTTP, any chance of a pic of your new ONT? Mine only has a single Ethernet port. Did you have to pay for the 4 port ONT and who organised it? Zen or BT?

Sorry for all the questions.

Hi, i wil take pic in few minutes.
Zen organised with openreach as a fault to sort the issue out, openreach turned up and replaced the box no charges at all.

atomic7431 · 12 Sep 2019 at 11:35

Another good thing about zen is, you dont have to have a landline so i saved more pennies there on the overall price.

Deleted member 77746 · 12 Sep 2019 at 11:40

ah I see! it's FTTP not FTTC! Gotcha! I see what you mean! nice update and thanks.

MissChief · 12 Sep 2019 at 12:30

Soon as I read about port 2 I wondered if you’d been given a single port ONT. Turned out you had been. They’re getting more and more common.

atomic7431 · 12 Sep 2019 at 12:47

The bt engineer said something about them being superseded, wasnt sure which way around he meant though, it seemed as if the 4 port had been superseded by the 1 port variant?

VaderDSL · 12 Sep 2019 at 12:55

Cheers Atomic!

MissChief · 12 Sep 2019 at 13:07

atomic7431 said:
The bt engineer said something about them being superseded, wasnt sure which way around he meant though, it seemed as if the 4 port had been superseded by the 1 port variant?

They’re cheaper than the four port versions and how many people are going to have two or more FTTP services running at the same time? Very few.

atomic7431 · 12 Sep 2019 at 13:36

VaderDSL said:
Cheers Atomic!

No problem

MissChief said:
They’re cheaper than the four port versions and how many people are going to have two or more FTTP services running at the same time? Very few.

only when changing provider, just guarantees no service loss.