Zen Internet is an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

(ISP) based in

Rochdale Rochdale ( ) is a town in Greater Manchester, England, and the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale. In the United Kingdom 2021 Census, 2021 Census, the town had a population of 111,261, compared to 223,773 for the wid ...

, England.

History

Zen Internet was founded in 1995 by Richard Tang (then Managing Director, now CEO) after a drink in the pub, and was one of the first ISPs in the United Kingdom. Zen began by providing Internet access to schools and small businesses in the

area. 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 The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

proposed changing their

content delivery Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of information or materials through digital platforms. The distribution of digital ...

provider for their

iPlayer BBC iPlayer (stylised as iPLAYER or BBC iPLAYER) is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available Over-the-top media service, over-the-top on a wide range of devices, including Mobile phone, mobile phones and Tablet computer ...

streaming service, Zen Internet warned that costs would increase once the move to Level3 was complete. 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 Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), or external dispute resolution (EDR), typically denotes a wide range of dispute resolution processes and techniques that parties can use to settle disputes with the help of a third party. They are used for ...

scheme giving access to independent and speedy conflict resolution.

Products

Using

Juniper Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' ( ) of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere as far south ...

and

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

hardware, the Zen core network is run over four POPs, one in their home town of Rochdale, and three others in

Equinix Equinix Inc. is an American multinational company headquartered in Redwood City, California. It specializes in internet connectivity and colocation centres, also referred to as carrier hotels. The company converted to a real estate investment t ...

in Manchester, Telehouse and Interxion in London. Zen Internet is a member of the UK

peering In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the "down-stream" users of each network. Peering is settlement-free, also known as "bill-a ...

points LINX,

LONAP The London Access Point (LONAP) is a London-based Internet exchange point (IXP) founded in 1997 as a membership organisation and currently has over 200 members, making it the second largest IXP in the UK and around the 15th largest IXP in the wo ...

, MaNAP and IX Manchester. In 2005, Zen unbundled the Rochdale exchange followed by the Bury,

Oldham Oldham is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amongst the Pennines on elevated ground between the rivers River Irk, Irk and River Medlock, Medlock, southeast of Rochdale, and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative cent ...

and Blackfriars exchanges in 2006 to provide an unbundled service to local residents and businesses. Zen have six main product areas: * Broadband: fibre broadband using

FTTP Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic ...

and FTTC,

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

, DSL Hardware & SoGEA * Security services: UTM firewalls, content filtering * Domain and hosting services:

Data centre A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for business ...

, shared hosting (Windows & Linux), dedicated server hosting, managed hosting,

domain name In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services, and more. ...

s, 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 network A wide area network (WAN) is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits. Businesses, as well as schools and government entities, use ...

s * Design and marketing services:

website design Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code an ...

content management systems A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

websites,

intranet An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in ...

extranet An extranet is a controlled private computer network that allows communication with business partners, vendors and suppliers or an authorized set of customers. It extends intranet to trusted outsiders. It provides access to needed services for au ...

site design and build,

search engine optimisation Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as " organic" results) rather than ...

email marketing Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to s ...

social media marketing Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for b ...

*Voice: Phone services, SIP trunking – Business Talk SIP,

VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

– broadband voice, ISDN30

Awards

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 ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

Tech Track 100 from 2003 to 2006 as well as featuring in the

Sunday Times Fast Track 100 The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 was an annual league table published in association with ''The Sunday Times'' newspaper in the UK. It ranks Britain's 100 private companies with the fastest-growing sales over the last three years. It is published ...

in 2004. In 2010, Managing Director Richard Tang was named Customer Service Entrepreneur of the Year by

Ernst & Young EY, previously known as Ernst & Young, is a multinational corporation, multinational professional services partnership, network based in London, United Kingdom. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, it is one of the Big Four accounting firms, Big F ...

at an awards ceremony in Manchester. This award recognised the retraining scheme introduced by the company in the Rochdale area. Retrieved 24 April 2022.

References

External links

* {{Telecommunications industry in the United Kingdom Internet service providers of the United Kingdom Telecommunications companies of the United Kingdom Telecommunications companies established in 1995 1995 establishments in England Companies based in Rochdale