Customers of ISP Air Broadband which were taken over by ZYBRE in November 2022 and ZYBRE’s customers have today faced a fresh wave of internet outages and customers on City Fibre and ONFL have had letters to say Air Broadband/Zybre are being removed from their networks.
Zybre take over
This morning (10/3/2023) many of Air Broadband and Zybre’s customers woke up to find their internet connection not working which is the latest in a long line of issues facing customers of either ISP.
Air Broadband is an ISP best known for selling competivily priced services on a number of Full Fibre networks including City Fibre, ONFL, MS3 and Full Fibre Fibre Heroes.
They offered social tarrif from £20 per month and did not increase their prices during contract.
We used to recommend Air Broadband until recently when we began receiving complaints from customers about their service with Air Broadband.
The issues started when ZYBRE acquired Air Broadband back in October/November 2022 since then there have been multiple reports of speed issues, outages and routers and other equipment not being delivered.
In recent weeks the situation has deteriorated further and it has been extremly difficult to get hold of either company by phone or via email.
A reliable source a now ex member of staff at both companies told us last Friday (3/3/2023) that ZYBRE had without warning made all of Air Broadband staff redundant and had also done the same with most of the staff at ZYBRE.
This may well explain the difficulties in getting hold of anyone at either company.
When we tried Air Broadband’s telephone numbers are out of service and ZYBRE lines got the we are closed message despite it being within their specified opening hours.
A check on companies house reveals ZYBRE is overdue on providing accounts.
Trust Pilot reviews or Air Broadband and ZYBRE along with social media and forum posts on the internet show many of their customer facing issues.
Disconnection Letters
It has been reported that both City Fibre and ONFL have issued letters to Air Broadband and ZYBRE customers on their networks that there internet may go down at anytime.
City Fibre has stated in an FAQ page on their website
“It has come to our attention that Zybre/Air Broadband is in breach of its contractual obligations to CityFibre and a number of other suppliers. Customers have also raised major concerns regarding the quality of service they received from the company.”
ONFL have said similar in letters sent out to their customers.
Both network’s have said they will maintain the connection to Air/ZYBRE for as long as they can in ONFL’s case for another week at least to give time for customers to migrate over to a new provider.
Both companies are trying to make the migration as smooth and as fast as possible to minimise disruption to customers.
Full Fibre Fibre Heroes customers were also impacted by todays Outage
In a tweet Fibre Heroes said
“We are aware of a technical issue that is affecting ZYBRE customers on our FullFibre network and are working with them as a priority to resolve. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and will post updates accordingly.”
They later Tweeted to say the issues had been resolved which means for now customers of Air/ZYBRE on Full Fibre Fibre Heroes network should be working and ones we know of are working now at time of writing.
Fibre Heroes website did remove ZYBRE off their list of partners last week and Air Broadband was removed serval weeks ago.
I have reached out to Full Fibre for a statement.
Meanwhile ZYBRE have put out a message on their website citing a ‘Major Outage’ caused by a ‘Fibre break’
The next update was due by 16:00 but has not appeared.
It is not entirely clear at this stage what Zybre’s future is but based on what we have been told its not good.
What to do if your impacted?
The big question is what do you do if your impacted by this situation?
City Fibre and ONFL are strongly advising their customers to migrate onto a different provider but state its up to you to deal with your current contract obligations with Air/ZYBRE.
If you have exhausted trying to get a resolution to issues and compaints with Air Broadband and or ZYBRE then reporting it to Ofcom is the next step.
Usually you would try the ombudsman as a next step but when I checked with CISAS they came back with:
“
I have searched our systems and have been unable to find either parties listed with CISAS, Ombudsman Services or Ofcom.
You may therefore wish to contact Ofcom regarding this matter.”
Reporting to Ofcom it seems is the next best step.
We have reported this to Ofcom ourselves and they are looking into serval complaints in relation to Air/ZYBRE.
This raises a wider question as to what should happen in these situations.
When an energy supplier goes into administration and or is no longer fit to provide a service Ofgem steps in and customers are automatically migrated to another supplier with no loss of service.
There is currently no equivalent process for the telecoms industry which means customers may face outages and loss of money.
With Internet access becoming more and more of a vital utility especially when the PSTN network is switched off maybe the goverment should do more to safeguard customers.
With the broadband market being saturated this may well not be the last time customers face this situation.
We did try reaching out to ZYBRE but have not had a response and can not get though to them.
Struggling to migrate away from AIR/Zybre because Vodafone and other providers are stating that they are “Unable to provide to my home because I have an active connection on the City Fibre network”.
City fibre is yet to respond to my request for help so I am stuck in limbo without a provider and with the network not allowing migration.
There are serious and significant lessons here for City Fibre to learn as they appear to be ill-prepared and largely incapable of talking to and resolving these types of issues with the end customer who is using their network.
Ironically, my service simply was switched off, and as I considered what to do, the postman delivered the letter from City Fibre telling me service would likley be switched off and I should move. Sadly, I chose Vodafone, who took two and a ahalf hours to complete sign up and I have to wait until 28th March for an engineer visit – which, as I have already got the fibre to my house, seems rather stupid – but it NOT optional. Worse, my landline is VOIP, so the phones don’t work and even more worrying, Vodafone cannot guarantee my 40 year old phone number will be able to be ported if Air are unable to approve it. I have cancelled the direct debit, despite having just paid a few days back, and frankly – it’s a real mess.
Follow up – Vodafone had problems, and for whatever reason thought that I needed to get my open reach line converted to a new city fibre line. No amount of trying could make the text handler understand I was already a city fibre customer – eventually I cancelled and tried giganet – but I was now at the back of the angry queue and my giganet date was worse than the Vodafone one – so I’m still waiting – I have a new router arrived (only one port rather than four, but never mind) and hopefully on Tuesday the service LED will light. Time will tell. What I doing know is that it’s cost me dearly, in terms of working from home as my NAS drive spotted the active internet via my tethered phone and attempted to sync the office drive with a few Tb of video files. EE happily used my allowance up and I’m now paying silly prices for data that I need to work properly. My Ring alarm and doorbell is still working on cellular and 1 bar on my phone means that the doorbell rings after the DPD driver is away! It does make me wonder if more damage would be done to the country by killing the internet provision than a missile attack. Shut down the ISPs and phone system and everything would stop. No commerce, no communications? We would be dead in the water,
I too found my broadband service had stopped working on Fri 9th March. I spent all day trying to sort the router/ Contacting Airbroadband only to find 2 days later the same letter from city fibre saying the same thing. Canceled Cancelled direct debit ect..
I then ordered a new service through Vodafone with the same 28th March date to connect me, but I’ve since found that this won’t be going ahead, as Zybre(Air broadband) haven’t released me from their service. I’ve tried to contact Zybre to no avail.
They are simply holding me hostage…
I am in the exact same situation.
However, once Zybre answered me for my 15th email on the 4th April to say it would cost me about £400 to leave them as I am still in contract. What a joke.
I did not hear from them since, but I got my normal monthly invoice. (At least I had ingernet this month, without outage). I am still very concerned about this whole situation. Bizarre..
Another trapped Air/Zybre customer here. The only other option in my area is TalkTalk but they can’t/won’t do an active line takeover, and despite writing to and emailing Zybre *three months* ago saying I want out of the contract and cancelling my direct debit I’m still stuck. This morning the connection went down and I have little hope it’ll return (same for my next door neighbour), so I am well and truly boned.