Broadband ISP Zen Internet Moves to Become UK Altnet Aggregator
In recent months’ we’ve been reporting on how Rochdale-base ISP Zen Internet has expanded the reach of their “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband network by signing wholesale access agreements with a number of alternative network providers, such as Trooli and Freedom Fibre. But their ambitions aren’t limited to retail packages.
Zen previously only supplied services to homes and businesses using broadband products from Openreach (BT) and CityFibre, but as above they’ve been busily expanding that range of networks. However, the provider has also spoken of its “aspirations to become the UK’s alt-net aggregator of choice“, which could provide an alternative choice to the likes of PXC (TalkTalk Wholesale), AllPoints Fibre and others in the wholesale space for rival ISPs (partners) to harness.
In keeping with this, Zen has this week announced that it will be making its “entire full fibre footprint” available to its channel partners via their soon to launch Fibre Hub platform (not a router). Zen’s CEO, Richard Tang, has hinted about doing this before (December), but it’s now becoming a reality.
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Zen also confirmed the unsurprising news that they were currently in discussions with “several other alt-nets“, including those focused on the B2B market, to help further expand the range of options available to partners.
Richard Tang said:
“There are about 100 companies building full fibre networks in the UK at the moment. One of these is Openreach, and of the others, there are about 20 or so scale players. We want to offer our partners access to as many of those alt-nets as possible.
The alt-nets are leading the best free market infrastructure competition since the internet began. That’s great news for Zen and it’s great news for our partners in terms of choice and competitive pricing. We’re not stopping with the deals we’ve made. We’re talking to a number of other alt-nets already.”
The provider added that they’re currently expecting to make CityFibre’s full fibre footprints available to partners in April 2025, while Trooli will follow “later this summer” and Freedom Fibre are due to be introduced into their Partner Portal “soon“.
The new Fibre Hub itself will launch to existing Zen Partners towards the end of April, “offering a one-stop shop for full fibre residential and business availability“, said Zen. Sales and marketing campaign data and materials will also be integrated, helping Zen Partners to seize the opportunity.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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So essentially Zen are creating a Virtual Wholesale Fibre Network. Certainly sounds like a step in the right direction.
The margins would have to be wafer thin, for both Zen and their partners. It means any profit would have to be split three ways, between the Fibre provider, Zen and the channel partners.
This might not be a problem though, because Zen can use economies of scale to make the CapEx per connection work out much cheaper than if a smaller ISP were to directly integrate with a fibre network provider.
For example, let’s say A&A are thinking of offering their service over a medium sized AltNet. They would have to write code to integrate with that AltNet’s ordering, provisioning, faults, etc. systems. That’s a lot of work, and they might want to make £5 more profit per customer per year to make it worthwhile vs just using Openreach. But perhaps Zen would charge £1 per customer per year, because they can get 10x more customers due to their scale and therefore earn 2x as much revenue for the same amount of software development.
At the risk of stating the obvious, all the numbers above are make-believe, but I think the approximate sizes are about right.
Zen is one of the few companies sufficiently well-placed to do this, with a national backhaul network of their own, and already selling wholesale. They are a natural fit.
Talktalk would be the other one, but are probably not agile enough to deliver it. Lots of integration work required with all those smaller altnets (unless they develop one standard of their own and force the altnets to integrate with it)
You understand Talk-Talk are technically already aggregating more than Zen, it’s under the PXC brand now they have quite a few
Hilariously Zen don’t have their own backbone network, they use PXC to deliver it..
Talktalk acquired Virtual1 to become PXC. They have V1s portal and API capabilities to onboard altnets at a much faster pace than Zen plus 4.3 million subscribers Vs 200k… Seriously doubt Zen will put any dint into the market.
@Jon Motsom actually you’ll find Zen uses a mix or networks, they have unbundled 500+ exchange
Yes and all those exchanges use PXC network to get to major data centres. They have no core network . Trust me, exactly how both networks work
@Jon Motsom you clearly don’t know what you are talking about, Zen does have a core network you can find details online. They use a mix of things like DFX, EAD and the likes from Openreach, Zayo, Neos etc to connect their exchange up.
I don’t trust you know how they work
Sounds very much like what AllPointsFibres new system is already doing
Very similar, but from what I’ve seen (I’m a Zen wholesale customer) Zen are launching earlier than APFN and at a much better price. Plus Zen has the advantage of a well established wholesale platform and a team experienced at selling a d supporting wholesale broadband
As far as I’m aware AFPN only have their own fiber in couple of places, then use Openreach and Cityfibre and haven’t heard them plan any others, while Zen has Openreach, Cityfibre, Trooli, Freedom Fibre (coming soon) and another coming later this year.