Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Zen Internet

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Industry
  
Internet

Founder
  
Richard Tang

Number of employees
  
413 (May 2012)

Key person
  
Richard Tang

Products
  
Internet Services

Headquarters
  
Rochdale, United Kingdom

Founded
  
1995

Type of business
  
Limited

Zen Internet httpslh3googleusercontentcomOvb3NANL6VsAAA

Key people
  
Richard Tang (Managing Director)

Managing director
  
Steve Warburton (Channel Partners)

Profiles

A quick tour of zen internet


Zen Internet is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) based in Rochdale in Greater Manchester, England.

Contents

The zen internet hosting portfolio what is hosting


History

Founded in 1995 by Managing Director Richard Tang after a drink in the pub, Zen Internet was one of the first Internet Service Providers in the UK. Zen began by providing Internet access to schools and small businesses in the Rochdale area. Its website claims it has since moved from 2 employees in 1995 to 413 at the start of May 2012 and in 2004 achieved an annual turnover of £14.2 million along with a customer base of more than 77,000 broadband users nationwide.

In 2006 the company won several awards at the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) annual awards ceremony. These awards were: "best business ISP", "best heavy business broadband", and "best uncontended service".

The company featured in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 from 2003 to 2006 as well as featuring in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 in 2004.

In February 2008, the company announced they would not be speaking to or partnering with Phorm, a controversial advertising company hoping to purchase user data from UK Internet service providers.

In April 2008 Zen Internet moved all its employees from their purpose-built HQ on Moss Bridge Road in Rochdale into the much larger Sandbrook House offices located at Sandbrook Park (Rochdale), a move part funded by the North West Regional Development Agency.

In August 2008, after the BBC proposed changing their content delivery provider for their iPlayer streaming service, Zen Internet warned that costs would increase once the move to Level3 was complete.

In 2010 Managing Director Richard Tang was named Customer Service Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young at an awards ceremony in Manchester. This award recognised the retraining scheme introduced by the company in the Rochdale area.

Zen provides broadband to both businesses and home users. They were one of the early ISPs to offer 'self-install ADSL' and designed their network not to rely on other providers for backbone. Zen Internet are currently a member of the CISAS (Communication and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme), an alternative dispute resolution scheme giving access to independent and speedy conflict resolution.

Products

Using Redback, Foundry, Juniper and Cisco hardware, the Zen core network is run over five POPs, two in their home town of Rochdale, Telecity in Manchester, Telehouse in London and a fifth POP in Leeds.

They are a member of the UK peering points LINX, LONAP, ManNAP and IX Manchester. In 2005 they unbundled the Rochdale exchange followed by the Bury, Oldham and Blackfriars exchanges in 2006 to provide an unbundled service to local residents and businesses. Zen have six main product areas:

  • Broadband: fibre broadband, ADSL, SDSL, DSL Hardware
  • Security services: UTM firewalls, content filtering
  • Domain and hosting services: Data centre, shared hosting (Windows & Linux), dedicated server hosting, managed hosting, domain names, colocation, cloud hosting
  • Leased Lines: Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM), access (Up to 2 Mbit/s), Ethernet (2 Mbit/s - 1 Gbit/s), private wide area networks
  • Design and marketing services: website design, content management systems,e-commerce websites, intranet/extranet site design and build, search engine optimisation, email marketing, social media marketing
  • Voice: Phone services, SIP trunking - Business Talk SIP, VOIP - broadband voice, ISDN30
  • References

    Zen Internet Wikipedia