UK ISP Zen Internet Bids Farewell to Usenet Service

In a not entirely surprising move Zen Internet has informed customers that their old Usenet (Newsgroups) service is to be completely withdrawn.

Newsgroups, arguably a relic from the old days of Internet connectivity, were a special kind of dynamic message board system. But these days many consider such services to be obsolete, with most of the same functions being taken over by web-based forums, Facebook and various other social networking / chat services.

Today you’d be hard pressed to find any UK ISPs promoting access to Newsgroups as a service feature and most of the mainstream broadband providers have long since removed it, although many people do continue to use them. Similarly Zen Internet scaled back its own Usenet solution in 2009 and thus the writing was already on the wall.

A Spokesperson for Zen told ISPreview.co.uk:

“The service is being removed as the cost of maintaining the service greatly outweighs the usage. We have looked at alternative Usenet providers but have found none that we would consider promoting to our customers. If they search the Internet there are a number of lists of providers, from which they may make their own selection.”

Zen is home to around 100,000 broadband subscribers and the ISP informs us that they’ve already contacted customers who are still actively using the Usenet service, which apparently equates to less than 200 people.