Zen will start moving existing residential and business customers over to the new services later this summer, as long as they are available in their area. The new services, which will be on a “like for like” basis with current products, will not change in price but customers can, in most cases, expect to receive a higher speed. Zen has already started communicating the planned move to its customers.
‘We have been working on this upgrade since late 2008. The final phase of tests and trials for these new faster services is due for completion this summer. We therefore fully expect to start moving existing customers over from late summer onwards and this will be done at no extra cost’, said Andrew Saunders, Head of Product Management and Marketing, Zen Internet.
New customers will also be provided with the faster services from late summer onwards, as long as they are available in their area. Any new customers joining Zen where the faster services are not yet available will be moved across as and when they are introduced. The faster services will be provided at the same price as Zen’s current services.
Even though Zen will be providing these new faster services it will not be introducing a traffic shaping policy.
‘Zen has always had a very clear proposition around our services. We are retaining our current monthly contracts and just want customers to enjoy the benefits of our new faster services at any time of the day, with no gimmicks or restrictions hidden in a fair use policy.’ added Saunders.
The speed customers can expect to receive will depend on how far they are from their local BT exchange. Based on the results of Zen’s current trials, it is estimated that the average download speeds will be between 9Mbps and 13Mbps, but some trial users are already achieving over 20Mbps.
Zen has upgraded its own network and is using elements of BT’s new 21st Century Network (21CN) project to bring customers these faster broadband services. 21CN is a UK wide communication network upgrade project currently being rolled out by BT. This will involve enabling all BT exchanges for 21CN including the faster ADSL2+ broadband technology. BT plan to cover 55% of homes and businesses by March 2010, depending on demand.
Investments in Zen’s network include upgrades of the connections from its network to the BT local exchanges, the significant increase in the capacity of its core network and the interconnections from Zen’s network into the rest of the Internet which have been expanded and optimised for resiliency.
‘Zen Internet was one of the first ISPs to embrace broadband technology in the UK and connected some of the earliest broadband circuits back in the summer of 2000. We have a mission to provide the best ISP service in the UK and so, over this summer, we are completing a major technology upgrade to our broadband services that will enable the introduction of faster 20Mbps services and bring the most significant changes for our customers since those pioneering days of 2000’ said Saunders.
Zen’s range of services includes Broadband, Leased Lines, IP VPN, Domain Names, Windows and Linux Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Managed Hosting, Colocation, Voice, Managed Firewalls, Online Data Backup and Web design.