Broadband ISP Zen Internet UK Switches CEOs Around Again
Rochdale-based UK ISP Zen Internet has today announced somewhat of a reverse after the provider’s current CEO, Paul Stobart, announced his intention to retire at the end of March 2023, after five years in the role. Replacing him will be the company’s original CEO, and current Founder and Chairman, Richard Tang.
Stobart has overseen a number of big changes at the ISP during his time in charge, such as their successful move to become a B Corp, the deployment of on-site solar to help power their facilities, the establishment of a plan to achieve Net Zero with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), being one of the few provider’s to join Ofcom’s Automatic Compensation scheme and the company’s general growth.
Speaking of growth, Stobart noted that Zen Internet had grown its revenues by 70% to annualised revenues of £110m and increased the size of our broadband base from 128,000 to 190,000 circuits. Zen has also unbundled a further 300 exchanges to reach their current footprint of 700 and continues to work on wider network upgrades.
Paul Stobart said: “It has been an incredible privilege leading this business for the last five years. We are all very proud of our achievements over this period.”
Richard Tang said:
“Five years ago, I offered Paul my job as CEO. I have said many times that it was one of my best decisions, and it really was. I have enjoyed enormously being Zen’s Chairman and brand ambassador, and supporting Paul in driving the business forward. We’ve had a great collaborative working relationship based on shared values, and it has been my pleasure and honour to work with him.
Now it’s time for me to get back in the driving seat, and I can’t wait. Although I was CEO for 23 years before Paul took over, it still holds all the excitement for me of starting a new job! Really looking forward to working as CEO, and taking us forward to the next chapter of the Zen success story.”
Back in 2018 we noted that Zen’s goals were to become a £100m business within 3 years and a £250m one within 10 years. We assume the latter target still stands for 2028, although the market has changed a lot since that was first set (it’s now much more aggressively competitive, especially in urban areas with lots of AltNets).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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I wonder if there will be any acknowledgement of the technical and customer service failures that have been occurring recently, that would at least help with restoring confidence in the Zen offering.
Ah yes “The Science™ based targets” rather than an actual and objective target for customer numbers or even customer satisfaction with an almost 10% of people on trustpilot giving it a 1* score. Clueless CEO tricking investors is nothing new though but eventually reckoning will come and the ESG bubble will pop
Zen don’t have investors
So are you claiming that the CEO owns 100% of all the shares? The money to expand the business came solely from his own pocket? He does not get any pocket money for being part of these ideological organizations?
@Sam
Check out the filings at Companies House. Richard Tang owns 100% of the shares of Zen Internet.
Somewhat at odds with the announcement today that Zen is the only “Which” recommended broadband provider. Maybe “Which” don’t have an axe to grind
@AdrianT
Wouldnt trust “Which” as far as I could throw them, they are just after people signing up for a regular subscription. Zen being the best is just laughable considering the issues their customers continually have with Zen’s own backhaul
The last 5 years Zen have gone badly down hill, Richard Tang now needs to reverse this decline before its to late.
Focus needs to be fully on their customer experience not on bloody solar panels on the roof.
If he really believed in net zero then he should do remote working rather than digging rare earths for solar panel batteries (which actually do harm the environment). People commuting to work will still cause emissions
Plus, if placing a few solar panels on the roof in a country with a lack of sunlight is the top achievement for a CEO then that is a clear sign of failure
@Pablo
Zen employee and remote worker here. Most departments at Zen have been 95% remote since the start of the pandemic. Personally, I’ve only been in the office once this year.
Certain jobs, such as network engineering, you wouldn’t want them doing that from home as you need them on site for a rapid response if something goes wrong.
Solar and electric charging points are only part of the solution to protecting the environment.
Solar does not “protect the environment” go look up videos on how cobalt is mined in Congo, which is responsible for 70% of the worlds cobalt. Also as someone already pointed out, solar panels come from the CCP, biggest polluter in the world by a longshot who wants to invade other countries in asia and now has the world’s biggest military naval fleet. Think Ukraine is bad? Wait until they start invading Taiwan
Go woke go broke
Michael what is your understanding of the word woke?
Preaching a leftist ideology rather than just selling your product is quintessential wokeness
Greta Thunberg becoming a doctor of theology just shows it has evolved into a religion which is a total joke
Definition of woke: “Alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination”. You do not have to only be a “leftist” to be concerned about social injustice and discrimination. The law is also designed to tackle discrimination and social injustice, and rightly so.
Let’s leave the slogans to ignorant politicians and don’t get sucked in by their twisting of words and phrases.
The definition of women, according to Cambridge, is anyone who identifies as such. The twisting has already happened
Also “social justice” can just be applied to “anything in accordance to the ideology”. Example: black lives matter is “social justice” but all lives matter is “racist”
Do not drink the woke koolaid
There are no reasonable centrists nor anyone one the right propagating the woke mind virus, it all comes from the left. Michael Shellenberger, an actual climate figure, has shared a very good infographic summarizing all the different woke stances listing the myths, “victims”, the authorities, the actual facts and the purifying speech and rituals
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr2oVxcWYAAXYUz?format=jpg&name=large
It really makes all the misleading language much clearer
Woke people are just as bad as Vegans
Haha Woke Taxonomy that is brilliant!!
Preaching veganism is probably the only category missing but it has lost so much steam that it has been engulfed by climatism. Oxford council banning meat from events in the name of the sungod, not for any sort of animal rights morality
@Pablo how do you know they don’t do remote working? They likely have some core internet equipment on-site that means they need to keep the site regardless, but that doesn’t mean all the workers are there full time.
As for solar – they actually work perfectly fine in this country, getting an average efficiency across the year of 2.3 kWh per kilowatt per day. Yes some countries can get double that, but it’s certainly not useless.
They also don’t need a battery in a commercial installation – a business uses the bulk of its power during the day, so there’s little point storing it. In Zen’s case, the current solar installation offsets only 3.3% of their energy use (with another 2.5%-worth still being installed), so it seems unlikely they have _any_ excess even at peak time.
No battery means no lithium means much less destructive mining to complain about.
You might ask why they’re bothering for only ~6% off their energy bill – but have you _seen_ energy prices recently? Businesses aren’t capped like home supply, so it’s likely even worse for them. It’ll likely pay for itself very quickly.
False. Solar panels have a very long payback period, that is if they don’t break down and if bought using tax breaks
Also the CCP controls the majority of the market so buying one is actually to the detriment of the world
In Zen’s case they will *easily* consume more than they generate at any time, so batteries are of no benefit – and a huge amount of kit they’ll have there is on 24/7 – they have a datacentre of sorts there too. So the staff make next to no odds in the grand scheme of things, home or otherwise.
Point of order though, businesses are getting some price capping until the end of this month – then it changes.
Zen customer service is little jaded nowadays. For instance intermittent line faults are not forwarded to Openreach unless over 3 line drop outs a day according to Luke in customer services.