Zen Internet now has 1.2 Gbps and 1.8 Gbps packages available via wholesale arm

Some 5.5 million premises can now order 1.2 Gbps or 1.8 Gbps Openreach full-fibre via the Zen Internet wholesale platform via any of the 700+ partners Zen Internet has.

We were delighted to be the first of Zen’s Partners to be able to deploy the multi-gig capabilities to one of our customers. Despite some initial challenges with connecting the new speeds, Zen was quick to overcome these, with the team going beyond to find a rapid solution.

Our customer has been enjoying the 1.8Gbps FTTP broadband speeds offering them faster data transfer, improved productivity, enhanced scalability, and increased redundancy and reliability. It is particularly pleasing to see Zen take a partner-first approach, making gigabit speeds available as a wholesale offer before they launched it into its consumer base.

Jason Philpot, Manager at PCQ

PCQ was the partner involved in connecting the first customer as part of a trial and in this case it was a golf course, with the service going live in May. The difference now is that things have moved out of the trial phase.

I am thrilled that Zen was the first broadband wholesaler to offer Openreach’s latest speeds. It really solidifies our commitment to providing the best service and value add we can to our partner base.

We are also looking at introducing the multi-gig broadband technology to our consumer base, the details of which we will share when available

Andrew Sayle, Zen’s Connectivity Portfolio Manager

The 5.5 million property footprint is a lot smaller than the Openreach full-fibre footprint and we believe this is likely down to Zen Internet offering the 1.2 and 1.8 Gbps products on exchanges where it has its own backhaul network, i.e. Zen Internet is buying direct from Openreach, rather than via the BT Wholesale platform, this reduces backhaul costs and makes the costs of offering multi Gigabit packages more predictable.

The news that Zen Internet is looking at its own mult-gig consumer packages is good news, though no doubt some will be upset that they are still looking into it, rather than announcing the launch.