Zen Internet is on a mission to make high-quality, full fibre internet available to more homes and businesses across the UK. As the UK’s largest B Corp-certified telecoms provider, Zen is also aiming to become the country’s leading alternative network (altnet) aggregator.
To support these ambitions, Zen needed a partner it could trust to upgrade its core infrastructure and deliver the speed and resilience its growing customer base demands. Neos Networks, a trusted partner already providing exchange backhaul services for Zen, was the natural choice.
The challenge
Zen needed a high capacity link to upgrade its north-south core network. “We wanted to increase the resilience of our core by bringing in another supplier,” said Ben Carter, Head of Networks & Infrastructure at Zen. “But we also needed to bring speeds up to where they need to be.”
The upgrade needed to support Zen’s Fibre Hub, a platform launched to aggregate services from the UK’s top altnets – a key step towards becoming the UK’s leading altnet aggregator.
Zen’s broader goal is to support the UK’s growing bandwidth as data centre investment, AI adoption and full fibre rollout accelerate nationwide. That means building capacity and resilience for the future, delivered at the right price.
The solution
Neos Networks delivered a 400Gbps optical link between Manchester and London, a significant upgrade that gives Zen the capacity it needs to grow. Zen also continues to benefit from Neos’s upgraded exchange backhaul services, which are critical to delivering ultrafast, resilient connectivity nationwide.
Why did Neos’s solution stand out?
First, quality. “Like Neos, we have an obsession with quality and reliability of uptime for our customers,” said Ben. “Their engineering approach – building for resilience all the way down the stack – aligned perfectly with ours.”
Second, trust. “Unlike other providers, Neos shared full details about their routing. That meant we could properly plan for resilience,” said Ben. “They trust us, and we trust them.”
And the price was right. “We needed an exchange backhaul partner who could give us quality and reliability at the right price in a tough market,” said Rajit Desai, Head of Commercial at Zen. “That’s exactly what Neos delivered.”
The outcome
With Neos Networks, Zen Internet now has the scale and resilience to grow while maintaining its exceptional service. The new 400Gbps link boosts capacity and strengthens the backbone that supports Zen’s Fibre Hub and long-term strategy.
Crucially, the partnership delivers when it matters most. “The quality of service when faults happen is exceptional,” said Ben. “We get specific, actionable updates from Neos’s Network Operations Centre. We track mean fault repair times across all our providers, and Neos comes top.” That performance underpins the outstanding customer service Zen Internet is known for.
And it’s a partnership designed for the long term. “Neos gave us a roadmap aligned to our journey,” said Ben. “A step-by-step plan for growth that’s commercially viable. Not everyone gives you that.”
Rajit agreed: “We expect net volume growth over the next five years, and we see Neos invested in the right parts of the network to support that.”
Together with Neos Networks, Zen Internet is now ready to scale with confidence, delivering better connectivity to more customers nationwide.
“In Neos we have a partner that not only delivers robust, high capacity network solutions, but also real agility and collaboration, helping us deliver for our end users. Our collaboration is built on open communication, rapid provisioning, and shared engineering standards like equipment duplication, diverse routing, and true east-west redundancy. This approach means we can rely on Neos to deliver a network that consistently meets the high standards our customers expect.” John Lyons, Technical Director at Zen Internet.
