Zen Internet marked 30 years in business this year. The company was incorporated by its founder and CEO Richard Tang on 13 September 1995 and then launched a month later. Zen held a summer party for its staff and their families at its offices on 27 September, with a host of activities throughout the day.

“It’s testament to our longevity that we are the UK’s oldest ISP,” said Tang. “Meanwhile, all our main competitors when we started aren’t around any more for one reason or another.”

When Tang came up with the idea for Zen 30 years ago, little did he know how transformational the Internet was going to become.
“It all started in the summer of 1995 when I heard about the Internet for the first time and over a meeting in the pub, I asked my brother Dan if he was interested in setting up an ISP,” said Tang. “He agreed to build the network and the rest is history.

“I sunk my life savings of £5,000 into the new company and we started with a couple of Linux PCs, six dial-up modems on a wooden Ikea shelf, a router and a 64Gbps leased line. We sold our first dial-up access to the Internet for £10 a month and went from there.

“In the early days, we had to work really hard just to stay afloat. All of the money was going on the rent and buying the equipment to build and upgrade the network, and I remember looking at my bank balance and thinking we are going to have to sell a lot of these £10 packages.”

Tang decided to establish the business in Rochdale because most of the other ISP startups were in London and there was little competition in the north. It was a move that paid almost immediate dividends.

Zen turned its first profit in the year ending September 1998. But that year Dixons launched its own ISP, Freeserve, and Tang instantly feared the worst.

“What I initially thought was going to be a threat actually turned into an opportunity,” said Tang. “We lost some of our consumer customers, but it forced us to focus on our more lucrative business segment.”  
 
Riding the wave

With the advent of the broadband in the 2000s, Tang said that Zen “rode the wave”, doubling its turnover year-on-year from 2000 to 2004. As more consumers went online, so he said that Zen tapped into the need for businesses to meet their demand.

“We went through a phase of exponential growth,” said Tang. “We made £1 million in 2000, then £2 million in 2001, £3.5 million in 2002, £7.8 million in 2003 and £14 million in 2004.

“We got to a point where we were getting so many broadband orders that we couldn’t keep up with demand, so we had to stop taking them for a short period of time and put up our prices.”  

In 2001, Zen also moved from the Rochdale industrial estate where it was based into its first proper headquarters. By 2008, the business had grown to 280 employees split across three sites, so Tang decided to consolidate them and bought its current offices at Sandbrook Park from Thomas Cook for £20 million. Today, the company employs just over 600 staff.

“The offices give us a greater credibility, particularly among bigger enterprises,” said Tang. “As one major client once said to me: ‘When we saw the size of your new offices, we knew that you had the capacity to meet our needs’.”

Zen continued its rapid expansion in the 2010s, when it built the majority of its telephone exchange footprint. Today, the company is in 690 exchanges across the country.

“We basically moved from being dependent on the big wholesalers to competing on a level playing field,” said Tang. “Building that network was pivotal to the company’s success.”

Nine months ago, Tang decided that he wanted to establish Zen as the full fibre and altnet aggregator of choice for the Channel. Having signed up Openreach, CityFibre, Trooli, Freedom Fibre, ITS and Sky Business Wholesale so far, with two more altnets in the pipeline and a target to onboard one new altnet every quarter, he believes that Zen is delivering on that ambition.

“It seems like we have gone full circle,” said Tang. “With all of this infrastructure competition for full fibre, it feels a bit more entrepreneurial again, like it did 20 years ago. It’s a very exciting time – there’s lots of opportunity. We’re talking with lots of altnets and doing lots of deals.”

Golden opportunity

Tang views the current market as a golden opportunity for channel partners to capitalise on the availability of and customer demand for full fibre. He said that many MSPs are too small to do business directly with the full fibre providers or the process of accessing it is too complex, but the Fibre Hub enables them to do so seamlessly.

“The momentum with the Fibre Hub is building,” said Tang. “Not only are we getting more interest from the altnets, but also our existing and new channel partners as it gives them access to all of the different fibre footprints in the UK, with three of the bigger players in the Channel looking to sign deals to become Zen partners as a result.”

Tang, who likes to empower his employees, but as a software engineer by trade admits that he sometimes “dives into the detail”, has committed to never sell the company. Having seen many of his rivals sell up, he’s adamant that Zen will remain independent.

The company’s purpose statement is to “do right by people and planet”, a motto borne out in the words on Tang’s T-shirt. It achieved B-Corp certification in 2020, reflecting its social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability.

“Our priority is to put people and the environment first,” said Tang. “Money is simply the fuel that we need to make that happen.
“Right now, we are in the thick of a climate crisis, and businesses have a big role to play in helping to address that. I want to do my bit by setting an example of what a sustainable business should look like.

“The fact that I’m sitting here 30 years after launching the company and the level of success it has achieved is beyond my wildest dreams.” 

This interview was included in our October 2025 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.