Richard Tang, the Managing Director (MD) and Founder of popular UK ISP and recent PC Pro award winner Zen Internet, has announced the providers intention to focus on new voice and 'up to' 24Mbps (ADSL2+) broadband services towards the end of this year and into 2009.

Tang, speaking to the Crain's Manchester Business site, said that due to its small size the ISP could not compete on price with the big boys but were able to "win on customer service and reliability". He also mentioned plans for a new 1,000sq ft data centre capable of holding 1,000 servers, among other things:


Zen is predicted to post a £35m turnover for the year to this September 2008, up from £30.6m in 2007 and potentially rising to £40m by 2009. Sadly profits are forecast be down slightly due to a £463,000 write off related to their recent office move.

No further details were released about Zen's future product plans, although IP VPN is mooted and the voice products are likely to be voice-over-IP (VoIP) based. We wouldn't be surprised if some form of line rental service also turned up. Naturally Zen is unlikely to break with its focus on service quality and reliability; hence prices aren't expected to be at the budget level.