Zen Internet is an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

(ISP) based in

Rochdale Rochdale ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, at the foothills of the South Pennines in the dale on the River Roch, northwest of Oldham and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough ...

, England.

History

Zen was founded in 1995 by Richard Tang (then Managing Director, now Chairman) after a drink in the pub, Zen Internet 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 Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, was a digital technology company known for its contextual advertising software. Phorm was incorporated in Delaware, United States, but relocated to Singapore as Phorm Corporation (Singapore) Ltd in 2012. Founde ...

, 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 The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) was the regional development agency for the North West England region and was a non-departmental public body.NWDA Who We Are/ref> It was abolished on 31 March 2012. The Agency was responsible for ...

. In August 2008, after the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

proposed changing their content delivery 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 on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers and smart televisions. iPlayer services del ...

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, from the Arcti ...

and

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

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

Telehouse Telehouse is a major carrier-neutral colocation, information and communications technology services provider based in Docklands, London. Established in 1988, it operates eight facilities in London, Paris and Frankfurt. Part of the global Te ...

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-and ...

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 Bury may refer to: *The burial of human remains *-bury, a suffix in English placenames Places England * Bury, Cambridgeshire, a village * Bury, Greater Manchester, a town, historically in Lancashire ** Bury (UK Parliament constituency) (1832–19 ...

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...

and

Blackfriars Blackfriars, derived from Black Friars, a common name for the Dominican Order of friars, may refer to: England * Blackfriars, Bristol, a former priory in Bristol * Blackfriars, Canterbury, a former monastery in Kent * Blackfriars, Gloucester, a f ...

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 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 ...

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 telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

, SDSL, DSL Hardware * Security services: UTM firewalls, content filtering * Domain and hosting services: Data centre, shared hosting (Windows & Linux), dedicated server hosting,

managed hosting A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have f ...

, domain names, colocation,

cloud hosting Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multip ...

* 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, us ...

s * Design and marketing services: website design, content management systems,

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

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 c ...

extranet An extranet is a controlled private network that allows access to partners, vendors and suppliers or an authorized set of customers – normally to a subset of the information accessible from an organization's intranet. An extranet is similar to a ...

site design and build, search engine optimisation,

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

VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

– 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 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 News UK, whi ...

Tech Track 100 The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 is an annual league table published in association with The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK. It ranks Britain’s 100 private technology (TMT) companies with the fastest-growing sales over their last three years. ...

from 2003 to 2006 as well as featuring in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 in 2004. In 2010, Managing Director Richard Tang was named Customer Service Entrepreneur of the Year by

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewaterh ...

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 established in 1995 Companies based in Rochdale