Interview with Richard Tang

Hi,

An interview from this months North West Business Insider with Richard Tang is now online, thought I'd share the link here for those that might be interested:

http://www.insidermedia.com/productsandservices/arch...

Interesting read, thanks for the link

Very interesting and inspirational.

The fiercest competitors were all based around London � Demon, Pipex, PlusNet, Compuserve, Eclipse. Being northern had its advantages, he says.

Isn't that a little bit wrong though.

Plusnet (or should I say Force9) was a Yorkshire startup involving people such as Lee Strafford, Al Wyse and Paul Cusack.

The other one I am sure about but not quite 100% on is Eclipse. I'm sure they were Devon based (Exeter)?

Matt

In reply to a post by uno:

The fiercest competitors were all based around London � Demon, Pipex, PlusNet, Compuserve, Eclipse. Being northern had its advantages, he says.

Isn't that a little bit wrong though.

Plusnet (or should I say Force9) was a Yorkshire startup involving people such as Lee Strafford, Al Wyse and Paul Cusack.

The other one I am sure about but not quite 100% on is Eclipse. I'm sure they were Devon based (Exeter)?

Matt

It's obvious Richard Tang doesn't understand his market

>>The other one I am sure about but not quite 100% on is Eclipse. I'm sure they were Devon based (Exeter)?


My money is on Eclipse wholesaling many of the 'other' FTTC providers that market here on ThinkBroadband apart from BT and Zen.

Who is the 'real' provider providing 'uno/xilo' FTTC services?

Edited by deleted (Sun 20-Feb-11 21:06:32)

I thought Demon was Scottish...

Good article though, it's nice to see a commercial organisation not focusing entirely on grabbing money. A boss who has an active interest in the product the organisation sells is also a rare thing!

Good article and he comes across as being a nice guy who actually cares about his staff, customers and his product so I think he can be forgiven the idd slip up, perhaps he may have meant infrastructure wise when he mentioned companies being based around London?

I have to say I've moved around quite a bit and tried the cheaper ISPs (as you'll see from my sig) but Zen has always been the best and I wouldn't move again.

As regards Demon. they were a London based firm (Finchley I believe) which were bought out by the Scottish Telecoms operator Thus which have been acquired by Cable and Wireless.

Eclipse was started in Exeter and was acquired by Kingston Communications.

In reply to a post by techguy:

Good article and he comes across as being a nice guy who actually cares about his staff, customers and his product ...

He does care about his Staff and Customers. To be able to keep them happy Richard does need to change his products to suit not only the Market, but to be able to keep them sustainable.

Well I speak as a very satisfied customer and Zen is the only broadband ISP I recommend now.

In reply to a post by Azzaka:

......Richard does need to change his products to suit not only the Market, but to be able to keep them sustainable.........

Does that mean there are major product announcements on the way?

Not that I know of ... But with Richard, he is always looking to make things better.

In reply to a post by uno:

Plusnet (or should I say Force9) was a Yorkshire startup involving people such as Lee Strafford, Al Wyse and Paul Cusack.

They started life as Choice Peripherals in Mansfield I think as a hardware store who started the ISP side to flog their modems. Lee took it forward in Sheffy developing Plusnet but they certainly never existed in London that's spot on.

Gary

In reply to a post by Dash:

I thought Demon was Scottish...

Good article though, it's nice to see a commercial organisation not focusing entirely on grabbing money. A boss who has an active interest in the product the organisation sells is also a rare thing!

Demon was bought out by ScottishTelecom now Thus but they were always a London based ISP and were when Zen started out.

Gary

Not that I know of ... But with Richard, he is always looking to make things better.

Maybe he could start with the newsletters. I've just received two copies of the latest edition despite two previous requests to unsubscribe.

Try logging into the customer portal, Then click on the Task "Update My profile" (big icon centrally placed near the top of the portal) Alternatively you can access this by clicking "my account", "update my profile".

Scroll down the bottom to "Marketing Preferences" and uncheck all the boxes for e-mails you no longer wish to receive, and then click "Save"

If the boxes are already all empty its possibly you have a duplicate contact record somewhere - customer services should be able to help

I got two to the same address too.

In reply to a post by AndyS:

Not that I know of ... But with Richard, he is always looking to make things better.

Maybe he could start with the newsletters. I've just received two copies of the latest edition despite two previous requests to unsubscribe.

PM the e-mail address to me I'll get it removed

Thanks Gorskar & Zappardy.

I've followed Gorskar's advice so lets hope it's third time lucky!

In reply to a post by AndyS:

Maybe he could start with the newsletters. I've just received two copies of the latest edition despite two previous requests to unsubscribe.

Ditto - I have had this many times before... I have no idea which account them came in against though.

I have followed the unsubscribe link again...

Yep I got double too.

No such luck.

I've now had two more marketing emails, which is hardly surprising as they appear to be using a list which is months out of date.

Anyone from Zen fancy joining me in round four of marketing department whack-a-mole?

Please PM the e-mail address to me I'll look into this further for you.

Thanks

Richie