PC Pro and Zen: Celebrating 20 years of success together

This month (November 2023) marks the 20^th consecutive year that Zen has been named the PC Pro Best Broadband ISP.

Just think of that. We’ve won the award every single year since 2004. That’s nearly every year this century… and how things have changed in that time.

2004: Our first PC Pro award

Back in 2004, Zen was less than ten years old, PC Pro was itself just a year older, and the world was a very different place.

In 2023, the average UK broadband speed is a shade less than 70Mbps, and more users than ever are enjoying much faster full fibre connections. But 20 years ago, such dizzying speeds were only imaginable.

In fact, in 2004, thinkbroadband commended Zen for having the fastest broadband in their reviews, clocking in at just over 450Kbps (that’s around 150 times slower than the current UK average).

But what were we doing with those broadband speeds? In 2004 we were still some way from the kind of TV and video game streaming we see today. By 2004 though, we were happily downloading our musical entertainment and a mixed bag it was, with musical acts as varied as the Libertines, Peter Andre and Will Young all vying for our ears.

Modern smartphones were still a few years off, but platforms like Windows Mobile were beginning to suggest what the future might hold.

And, fun fact, the year of Zen’s first PC Pro award was also the year that a particular social network launched. You may have heard of it. It was called Facebook (now whatever happened to that?).

Through the noughties

The next five years saw a great deal of change, as the UK’s average download speeds jumped to nearly 4Mbps by the end of the decade!

And as we had more bandwidth at our disposal, what to do with it? Ubiquitous social media platform Twitter was launched in 2006, and the decade saw online video games become big business.

As music downloads had begun to dominate, old ways of consuming media began to change. Just two years after Top of the Pops was broadcast for the final time, Spotify launched in 2008 to take music streaming into the modern era.

When it came to connected technology though, popular culture would be forever changed in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. By this time, Zen was well on the way to its fourth consecutive PC Pro award, and the era of the smartphone had begun.

In Zen news, we continued to stay at the forefront of broadband, launching our ‘up to 8Mbps’ service in 2006 for our most demanding users. We even launched Broadband Voice, our first VoIP service, more than a decade before our current Digital Voice offering. And in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, one thing remained constant – we won the PC Pro Best Broadband ISP award!

A new decade… same old winner

After years of steady development, the 2010s was a boom decade for broadband, and Zen was at the forefront.

In fact, we first launched our fibre optic broadband service in 2010, with our ‘up to 100Mbps’ service launching in 2011.

In terms of UK averages, the decade began with average download speeds sitting at just over 5Mbps, and finished with average speeds topping 42Mbps. And in case you’re wondering what we’ve done with all that extra speed, just look at some of these stats for the decade.

In 2010, the average game download size on Steam was just over 11 Gigabytes. At the average speeds mentioned above, that’d take just over 5 hours to download in ideal conditions.

In 2019, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare download weighed in at a staggering 175GB. At 2010 download speeds, that would take a solid 3-days plus downloading before the game was even running – not what you want to be doing when you can’t wait to play!

By the end of the decade, video streaming had become commonplace. Netflix, Amazon and iPlayer were joined in 2019 by Disney Plus, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the way we watch TV and video has changed completely since 2010.

It’s not only TV and movies, but sport too that has made a huge move online. From Olympic Games and World Cups to Premier League football, in late 2022 it was estimated that 80 per cent of UK sports fans want to watch exclusively online.

By 2019 homes had been filled with Alexa smart speakers, smart heating and lighting, video doorbells… you name it, and our reliance on always-on connectivity was also being challenged by our smartphones which by now had become all-in-one gaming, browsing and communications machines.

In a decade that saw ever new and evolving ways to use our broadband connections, where smart TVs would become commonplace and seemingly every action required an internet connection, the only constant in all this was the guarantee of change. Oh, and Zen’s continuing reign as PC Pro’s Best Broadband ISP.

We began the decade with our seventh consecutive award and ended it with our sixteenth!

The modern era

Now, in an ordinary world, it would be hard to say that the change in broadband use witnessed in the 2010s could ever be surpassed, but we all know what happened in 2020.

Figures suggest that UK broadband use doubled in 2020, and then kept going up, as streaming, video calling and home working hit unprecedented highs.

And during this period, people became more dependent on their broadband connections than ever – to keep them working, connected and entertained. And as scrutiny on broadband providers became more intense than ever, surely a shake up in the most highly rated providers would be due?

But during this period, customers have discovered the importance of things like honesty, reliability, and ease of contact. They have discovered an appetite for their broadband providers to give real value – not just steep discounts followed by constant price hikes – and a commitment to putting people and the planet first. Thankfully, these are all areas where Zen excels. Our long-term commitment to ‘Happy Staff, Happy Customers, Happy Suppliers’ remains as unwavering as ever. And we have added a firm net zero commitment to the mix, also becoming B Corp certified in 2020 to further cement our dedication to doing business better.

As the modern era unfolds, as broadband – and ethical broadband – becomes increasingly important to more people, Zen has been consistently recognised as the best. PC Pro awards in 2020, 2021, 2022 and now 2023 have rounded out the full twenty for two decades as the UK’s best broadband provider.

Now as thrilling as these accolades are, it’s important for us to recognise the importance of our customers throughout the last 20 years. So many of you have been with us throughout, and we really do consider you a part of the Zen family. We wouldn’t have won this award so many times without your support and it is truly humbling that you would consistently rank us the best.

Here’s to the next twenty years… and making more broadband memories together!