Is Zen Internet down? How to check the status page, rule out your own kit, and report a fault

Where is Zen's status page?

There are two, and they cover different things:

• servicealerts.zen.co.uk — Zen's own alerts, split into Connectivity, Hosting and Miscellaneous, each marked “Outage” or “Partial” with start and end times. It links to a list of current broadband outages, a full service overview with history, and RSS feeds.
• status.zen.co.uk/broadband/ — notices from Zen's suppliers (Openreach and the other networks). Type the first four digits of your landline number to see faults and planned maintenance for your area, plus the last seven days. Zen's disclaimer is worth repeating: the fix times shown “are estimates and could be subject to change”.

If both are clean and your neighbours are online, the problem is probably in your house. Crowd-sourced trackers like Downdetector are a useful third opinion for a big regional outage, but they lag and they're noisy for a provider of Zen's size.

Is it me or them? The five-minute checklist

This is Zen's own no-connection guide, with the Full Fibre steps folded in.

1. Look at the ONT first (the white Openreach box on the wall). Zen says a healthy one shows green Power and PON lights and a green or flashing green Port/LAN light. A red LOS light means the fibre itself has a problem, and no amount of router rebooting fixes that.
2. Check the router. On the FRITZ!Box the Power/DSL light should be solid, and if you use Wi-Fi the WLAN light should be on and steady.
3. Power-cycle properly. Zen's instruction is to unplug the router for one minute, and on Full Fibre to unplug the ONT for one minute too, then power both back on. Give the ONT about two minutes to come back.
4. Go wired. Plug a laptop into the router by ethernet. If wired works and Wi-Fi doesn't, it's a Wi-Fi problem — see router settings for changing the network name and password, and the router guide if coverage is the real issue.
5. Check the two status pages above and ask a neighbour on any Openreach-based provider (BT, Sky, Plusnet and so on) whether they're down too — you're on the same Openreach network as they are.
6. Last resort on the ONT: Zen's guide says to hold a pin in the reset hole for 10–15 seconds and wait two minutes. If the Power light stays off after trying another socket, the ONT or its power supply is faulty and only Zen can arrange a swap.

How do I report a fault to Zen?

You can't ring Openreach yourself. Openreach's own help page says only your provider can see your line, run tests and raise a fault, so Zen is always the route.

• Phone: home technical support is on 01706 902001, open 08:00–20:00 Monday to Friday and 09:00–17:00 at weekends (from Zen's contact page, checked 13 September 2026).
• Live chat: offered for technical support on the contact page and via the chat button in My Account.
• Email: support@zen.co.uk — fine for a slow problem, wrong for a total loss of service, because the compensation clock (below) starts when Zen logs the fault.

Have your account number ready, say what the ONT lights are doing, and say you've already power-cycled and tested wired. Zen will still want to run its own line tests, and if you use your own router they'll likely ask you to try the Zen one, so keep it.

What compensation are you owed?

Zen is a signatory to Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme. The rates rose on 1 April 2026 and Zen's own FAQ quotes the same figures as Ofcom:

• Total loss of service: £10.34 per calendar day if it isn't fixed within two full working days of you reporting it. Zen's FAQ puts the cut-off at 23:59 on the second working day, and the payment runs until the fault is repaired.
• Missed engineer appointment: £32.31 if the engineer doesn't turn up, or the appointment is cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice.
• Delayed start of service: £6.46 per calendar day when a new connection goes live later than the date promised.

It's automatic — you don't claim. Ofcom says it arrives as a bill credit within 30 calendar days of the fault being fixed; Zen says it lands on the next bill and asks you to allow 15 full days (7 for a missed appointment) before querying an amount. The exclusions matter: nothing is paid for faults inside your home (Wi-Fi, internal wiring), for appointments you miss, or for faults you never reported. And Zen's FAQ adds that if a repair is still outstanding after 30 days, you can leave with no termination charges.

How long will an Openreach repair actually take?

Honest expectation-setting, from Openreach's own page: simple things like a line reset are “often fixed the same day”, “many faults are fixed within 1–2 working days”, and complex problems “such as underground cable damage, can take longer”. Faults outside your property (a cabinet, a pole, a street duct) don't need you at home; faults inside do, and Zen will book the slot.

Two things Zen can't control: the physical network is Openreach's (or CityFibre's) and every provider on it joins the same repair queue, and Openreach industrial action pushes that queue out. At the time of writing, Zen's service information page warns of strike dates on 6, 10, 20 and 24 October 2026, with repairs prioritised over new installs and a backlog expected afterwards. What Zen does control is the support experience while you wait, which is where its Which? and Trustpilot record comes from.

Weighing all this up before you join? Zen's fixed-price contract is covered on the price rises page, and the £40 referral eGift card applies to any package if you use the link before you order.

Sources

• Zen — Service alerts
• Zen — Broadband status (supplier notices)
• Zen — Fixing broadband with no connection
• Zen — Fixing a Full Fibre ONT issue
• Zen — Full Fibre router setup (expected lights)
• Zen — Contact us (numbers and hours)
• Openreach — What to do if your broadband stops working
• Ofcom — Automatic compensation: what you need to know
• Zen — Auto compensation FAQ
• ISPreview — Ofcom raises compensation payments (April 2026)
• Zen — Service information (Openreach industrial action)