I don’t generally use this blog as a vehicle to promote my employer, Timico. On this occasion though we have hit the news with the acquisition of Fareham based ISP NewNet.

“Uhuh” do I hear you say? Well there are a few points worth making.

Firstly there is an ongoing consolidation happening in the maturing ISP industry. We are seeing it at the top level, most recently with Carphone Warehouse’s purchase of Tiscali, and also in what might be termed as the Tier2 level in which Timico now operates.

Many companies in the mid size space have already been gobbled up by the biggies on their way to building market share: plus.net, bulldog, pipex et al spring to mind.

A void has to some extent appeared in the market for provision of quality ISP services to UK businesses. Many of those who used to do it are now part of big corporations where low cost is the most important issue, not customer service. Some have stayed independent, Zen being the obvious name that springs to mind, but their number is dwindling.

The challenge for ISPs addressing the business market is how to be able to sustain the necessary investment in infrastructure (eg MPLS, 10GigE, storage/cloud) and also to maintain the high levels of support demanded by a business customer whose internet connection has become mission critical.

Most ISPs in the UK today are still small operators whose idea of 24×7 operation is to give out the mobile number of the owner to a customer, or simply not to offer the service. This is neither scalable nor in the main satisfactory.

The Timico acquisition of NewNet makes great sense all round. Both companies have the same customer focussed culture, focussing on high levels of service. NewNet considerably extends the Timico capability in terms of co-location and hosting. Timico brings to NewNet a range of fixed line and mobile services and the combined entity is very much greater than sum of the parts.

All exciting stuff and more, I’m sure, anon.