Zen Internet
Encyclopedia
Zen Internet is an Internet Service Provider
(ISP) based in Rochdale
in Greater Manchester
, England
.
. Zen began by providing Internet access to schools and small businesses in the Rochdale
area. It has since moved from 2 employees in 1995 to 209 at the start of 2006 and in 2004 achieved an annual turnover of £14.2 million along with a customer base of more than 77,000 broadband
users nationwide. http://www.zen.co.uk/About.aspx
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 early 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 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.
They were one of the early ISPs to offer 'self-install ADSL' and recognised the advantage of not relying on other providers for backbone
.
, Foundry
, Juniper
and Cisco
hardware the Zen core network spans over 7 POPs
, two in their home town of Rochdale, Telecity in Manchester, two in Telehouse in London, and recently expanded into the US at TelX in New York connected via an STM-16
trans-Atlantic link provided by Hibernia Atlantic
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=154938; a 6th POP is available in Leeds.
They are a member of the major UK peering points including LINX
, LONAP
, ManNAP and in New York they are members of NYIIX and PAIX
. In 2005 they unbundled
the Rochdale exchange followed by the Bury, Oldham and Blackfriars exchanges in 2006 to provide an LLU service to local residents and Businesses; they are also working with the BBC
to provide access to the BBC's multicast
broadcasting trials http://www.bbc.co.uk/multicast/.http://www.zen.co.uk/about.aspx?page=43
In 2008 Zen Internet stated they would not be speaking to or partnering with Phorm
, a controversial advertising company hoping to purchase user data from UK Internet Service Providers.
After the BBC
proposed changing their content delivery provider for their popular iPlayer service, Zen Internet warned that costs would increase once the move to Level3 was complete.
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.
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
(ISP) based in Rochdale
Rochdale
Rochdale is a large market town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amongst the foothills of the Pennines on the River Roch, north-northwest of Oldham, and north-northeast of the city of Manchester. Rochdale is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan...
in Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 2.6 million. It encompasses one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom and comprises ten metropolitan boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan, and the...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
History
Founded in 1995 by Managing Director Richard Tang after a now famous drink in the pub, Zen Internet was one of the first Internet Service Providers in the UKUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Zen began by providing Internet access to schools and small businesses in the Rochdale
Rochdale
Rochdale is a large market town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amongst the foothills of the Pennines on the River Roch, north-northwest of Oldham, and north-northeast of the city of Manchester. Rochdale is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan...
area. It has since moved from 2 employees in 1995 to 209 at the start of 2006 and in 2004 achieved an annual turnover of £14.2 million along with a customer base of more than 77,000 broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
users nationwide. http://www.zen.co.uk/About.aspx
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
Sunday Times Fast Track 100
A list published annually in December in partnership with The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK.The list ranks Britain's fastest growing privately held companies by sales growth over the last 3 years....
in 2004.
In early 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 2010 Managing Director Richard Tang was named Customer Service Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
at an awards ceremony in Manchester. This award recognised the retraining scheme introduced by the company in the Rochdale area.
Market position
Zen has always focused on the UK business market although it does have a large consumer broadband customer base.They were one of the early ISPs to offer 'self-install ADSL' and recognised the advantage of not relying on other providers for backbone
Backbone network
A backbone network or network backbone is a part of computer network infrastructure that interconnects various pieces of network, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks. A backbone can tie together diverse networks in the same building, in different...
.
Products
Zen have six main product areas:- Broadband
- Fibre Broadband
- ADSLAsymmetric Digital Subscriber LineAsymmetric digital subscriber line is a type of digital subscriber line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilizing frequencies that are not used by a voice...
- SDSLSymmetric Digital Subscriber LineSymmetric digital subscriber line can have two meanings:* In the wider sense it is a collection of Internet access technologies based on DSL that offer symmetric bandwidth upstream and downstream...
- DSL Hardware
- Security services
- UTM FirewallsUnified threat managementUnified Threat Management is a comprehensive solution that has recently emerged in the network security industry and since 2004, has gained widespread currency as a primary network gateway defense solution for organizations...
- Content Filtering
- UTM Firewalls
- Domain & Hosting services
- Shared Hosting (Windows & Linux)Shared web hosting serviceA shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service or derive host refers to a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. Each site "sits" on its own partition, or section/place on the server, to keep it separate from other sites...
- Managed HostingDedicated hosting serviceA 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. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server, including choice of operating...
- Domain nameDomain nameA domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
s - ColocationColocation centreA colocation centre or colocation center , is a type of data centre where equipment space and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers...
- Shared Hosting (Windows & Linux)
- Leased Lines
- Access (Up to 2 Mbit/s)
- Ethernet (2 Mbit/s - 1 Gbit/s)
- Private WAN
- Web Solutions
- Website design
- Content management systemsWeb content management systemA web content management system is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease...
- EcommerceShopping cart softwareShopping cart software is software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online, analogous to the American English term 'shopping cart'...
websites - Intranet/Extranet site design and build
- Search engine optimisation
- Email marketing
- Social media marketingSocial media marketingSocial media marketing is an addition to personal, small business, corporate, and non-profit organizations’ integrated marketing communications plans...
- Voice
- Phone Services
- SIP TrunkingSIP connectionA Session Initiation Protocol connection is a Voice over Internet Protocol service offered by many Internet telephony service providers that connects a company's private branch exchange telephone system to the public switched telephone network via the Internet.Using a SIP connection may...
- Business Talk SIP - VOIP - Broadband Voice
Technology
Powered by RedbackRedback Networks
Redback Networks was a telecommunications equipment company, specializing in hardware and software used by ISPs to manage broadband services. In December 2006, Ericsson and Redback announced they had signed a definitive agreement under which Ericsson would acquire Redback...
, Foundry
Foundry Networks
Foundry Networks, Inc. was a networking hardware vendor selling high-end Ethernet switches and routers. The company was founded in 1996 by Bobby R. Johnson, Jr. and was headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA...
, Juniper
Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks is an information technology and computer networking products multinational company, founded in 1996. It is head quartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA. The company designs and sells high-performance Internet Protocol network products and services...
and Cisco
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
hardware the Zen core network spans over 7 POPs
Point of presence
A point of presence is an artificial demarcation point or interface point between communications entities. It may include a meet-me-room.In the US, this term became important during the court-ordered breakup of the Bell Telephone system...
, two in their home town of Rochdale, Telecity in Manchester, two in Telehouse in London, and recently expanded into the US at TelX in New York connected via an STM-16
Optical Carrier
Optical Carrier transmission rates are a standardized set of specifications of transmission bandwidth for digital signals that can be carried on Synchronous Optical Networking fiber optic networks...
trans-Atlantic link provided by Hibernia Atlantic
Hibernia Atlantic
Hibernia Atlantic is a privately held, US-owned, transatlantic submarine communications cable system in the North Atlantic Ocean which connects Canada, the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Europe....
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=154938; a 6th POP is available in Leeds.
They are a member of the major UK peering points including LINX
London Internet Exchange
The London Internet Exchange is an Internet exchange point situated in London. It was founded in 1994 by a group of Internet service providers. LINX is a founder member of , a Europe-wide alliance of Internet Exchanges...
, LONAP
LONAP
London Network Access Point is a London-based Internet exchange point founded in 1997 as a membership organisation and currently has almost 100 members, making it the 2nd largest IXP in the UK and around the 15th largest IXP in the World by membership...
, ManNAP and in New York they are members of NYIIX and PAIX
PAIX
PAIX, the Peering And Internet eXchange, is a neutral Internet exchange point operated by Switch and Data.PAIX began operations in 1996 as Palo Alto Internet Exchange in Palo Alto, California, and was owned and operated by Digital Equipment Corporation, or DEC...
. In 2005 they unbundled
Local loop unbundling
Local loop unbundling is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises...
the Rochdale exchange followed by the Bury, Oldham and Blackfriars exchanges in 2006 to provide an LLU service to local residents and Businesses; they are also working with the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
to provide access to the BBC's multicast
Multicast
In computer networking, multicast is the delivery of a message or information to a group of destination computers simultaneously in a single transmission from the source creating copies automatically in other network elements, such as routers, only when the topology of the network requires...
broadcasting trials http://www.bbc.co.uk/multicast/.http://www.zen.co.uk/about.aspx?page=43
In 2008 Zen Internet stated they would not be speaking to or partnering with Phorm
Phorm
Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, is a Delaware, United States-based digital technology company known for its advertising software. Founded in 2002, the company originally distributed programs that were considered spyware, from which they made millions of dollars in revenue...
, a controversial advertising company hoping to purchase user data from UK Internet Service Providers.
After the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
proposed changing their content delivery provider for their popular iPlayer service, Zen Internet warned that costs would increase once the move to Level3 was complete.
Zen Internet are currently a member of the CISAS (Communication and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme), an alternative dispute resolution
Alternative dispute resolution
Alternative Dispute Resolution includes dispute resolution processes and techniques that act as a means for disagreeing parties to come to an agreement short of litigation. ADR basically is an alternative to a formal court hearing or litigation...
scheme giving access to independent and speedy conflict resolution.
External links
- http://www.zen.co.uk - Zen Internet Homepage
- http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/zen.html - Zen Internet Details
- http://www.samknows.com/broadband/providers/zen - Zen Internet on SamKnows