Comms Dealer

Fidelity Group has teamed up with Pangea to secure an £80K contract that is helping Visit Sweden maintain optimum connectivity during an office relocation.

Located in the Swedish Embassy building, Visit Sweden is the face of Sweden’s official Tourism Board. Due to refurbishments taking place in its current office, the company needed to relocate temporarily to the ground floor and required connectivity during the relocation. A solid connection was essential, as Visit Sweden consistently need to upload high resolution images to their website.

Fidelity and Pangea provided SIMs to enable a temporary mobile connection delivering a 4G speed of nearly 30mbps download and 10-15mbs upload. Most importantly, the latency was sub 50ms, as a direct result of the efficiency of the Pangea network.

Tim Holway, Sales Manager at Fidelity Group, explains "The Speed and ease of deployment for Visit Sweden enabled by Pangea added a key element of winning this large refurbishment contract for Fidelity Group\"

Dan Cunliffe, Managing Director of Pangea said "We are delighted to see another Pangea partner able to increase their revenue from an existing client.\"

SME cloud collaboration solutions provider sipsynergy, has announced the appointment of Toby Gold as Chief Executive Officer and Tom Kelly as Chairman.  Taking up their positions with immediate effect, the duo are charged with accelerating the company’s growth and customer base, following a £2.75m investment from YFM Equity Partners (YFM).  

Toby Gold has spent the last 25 years in the UK IT industry and has held management and executive roles at a number of hardware, hosting and cloud services companies. Gold joins sipsynergy from Dell Software where his most recent role was Director of Northern Europe.

Commenting on his appointment, Gold explained, "I can’t wait to put all of my experience to great use as we continue enabling our reseller partners. As Tom and I take up our positions at the company, this new round of investment from YFM will enable sipsynergy to further expand its products.

"Through its unique partnership with Cisco, working through resellers into SMBs, sipsynergy has created one of the first white labelled UCaaS 'Business in a Box’ solutions. This has enabled partners to deliver their own branded Enterprise class collaboration solutions to small to mid-sized businesses.\"

Industry veteran Tom Kelly has more than 30 years’ experience in the UK IT and communications channel, during which time he has held senior management positions in a number of organisations. This included a 10-year stint as Managing Director of Logicalis UK where he helped transform the company into one of the UK’s largest Cisco Managed Services partners.

Tom Kelly, newly appointed Chairman of sipsynergy, added, "The company has its sights firmly set on conquering the SMB space. We’ve created a cloud hosted solution that provides a range of great communications technologies at an aggressive price point, which we’re taking to market through a growing partner base of IT and telecoms resellers and managed service providers.

"It’s a great time to be joining sipsynergy alongside Toby, there’s excitement running through the organisation as it enters what we’re looking to be a period of sustained growth, following this substantial new investment from YFM.\"

The Federation of Communications Services says it has has lined up a range of expert speakers for its annual Comms Provider event to take place at Eversheds in London on Thursday September 8th.

Tim Cowen, from commercial law firm Preiskels will discuss the Digital Single Market, post Brexit; Grant Forsyth from  Plum Consulting  will investigate Digital Cable Radio; and Mike Millar, from IMVNOx, the global trade association for the MVNx ecosystem, will look at Liberalising the Mobile Market.
 
Overall, the seminar programme at the event will explore  Regulation & Markets, The Growth of Fibre and Customer Expectations. To register for the event email fcs@fcs.org.uk

Cradlepoint, the global cloud-based network solutions business, is expanding its presence in Poland and the Czech Republic in partnership with Midis Group, a pioneer in operations management, to gain further market reach.

Cradlepoint provides innovative solutions for cloud-managed business continuity, primary and parallel networking, mobile, and M2M/IoT networking.

George Mulhern, CEO of Cradlepoint, said: "We are at an exciting time in Cradlepoint’s geographic expansion. Central and Eastern Europe have seen a migration to high-speed mobile networks enabling our unparalleled cloud-based solutions across market verticals.

"Establishing in-region support for our channel partners will provide local knowledge, expertise and experience to deliver our sales programmes and will be key to the continued success of our customers.\"

ProVu’s Sales Account Manager, Gavin Sykes has taken a massive leap of faith to net a bumper sum for Weston Park Cancer Charity.

Gavin undertook a skydive in memory of his dad who sadly lost his battle with Cancer back in January this year.

Gavin said, "The first moments when I jumped out of the plane were almost surreal. It was like nothing I've ever felt before. Even now, a few weeks later, I cannot get over how amazing the experience was.

"It was a huge honour to be able to do this for Weston Park. The work that
they do is vital to both current and future cancer patients all over the
UK and needs everyone's support to keep going; that's why I've already committed to doing it again next year!"

Gavin and his family plan to go on raising funds for Weston Park Cancer Charity. To date, they have raised over £1200.00.

Anyone wishing to support Gavin can donate at: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Paul-Sykes8

Microsoft's UK channel ambitions have intensified following the launch of Skype for Business (S4B) PSTN calling.

The man at the centre of Microsoft's new channel campaign is Ian Woolner, Senior Product Marketing Manager (UK), who said becoming a provider of phone lines was a natural progression for Microsoft following the development of its S4B telephony platform.

The new cloud services enable customers to acquire and assign numbers and provide inbound and outbound calling over the PSTN on mobiles or softphones via MS Office 356.

Speaking at the Cisilion-TeleWare 'Voice in the Cloud' event Woolner said: "We have built relationships with key telcos and are effectively wholesaling their minutes and bundling them to make it cost-effective for customers."

He said that subscribers to Microsoft PSTN services would have 'no concept of phone lines or SIP trucks' and would just pay for bundled domestic or international packages.

There would also be no differentiated rate for calls to landlines or mobiles within the bundles under what he described as a 'fair usage policy'.

"If I have 1,000 people in an organisation and they take the 1,200 minute bundle, that organisation has 1.2 million minutes of domestic calling at its disposal," he said. "It means predictable costs for CFOs and departments."

Woolner's channel strategy hinges on the formation of collaborative partnerships such as the link-up with MS Gold Communications partners Cisilion and Teleware and jointly staged launch events targeted at end users.

"There is an opportunity to grow our partner channel massively," added Woolner.

"Customers are moving away from on-premise telephony. Some may become Skype for Business users, other may want to develop converged solutions. We're building a channel that can remove the complexity."

The first Dark Fibre Symposium held by CityFibre at the London Stock Exchange on July 20th marked a new phase in its ambition to provide cities outside of the M25 with a much needed pure fibre infrastructure.

The event brought together local authorities, MNOs and CPs and demonstrated the benefits of a well planned Gigabit City build with enough fibre to serve all parties and future proofed by unlimited capacity.

"This collaborative approach creates connections between the potential beneficiaries of a new network build and connects people from the outset to make that network the best it can be, while ultimately bringing down costs," said Rob Hamlin, Commercial Director, CityFibre.

"This was the first time we brought together a cross section of partners and prospective customers to share our vision for a dark fibre future for the UK. We were blown away by the support and enthusiasm from everyone who attended and are following up on a number of mutual opportunities."

CityFibre's vision is for every building to be connected to fibre and with sleeves rolled up the company is not afraid to dig and create a modern fibre and duct network architecture.

"We are not shying away from doing something disruptive and often difficult in the short-term to deliver transformation for the future," added Hamlin. "We are funded to keep building out to 50 cities and extend existing builds as part our business model."

According to Hamlin, CityFibre is turning conventional R&D on its head when bringing dark fibre to a city.

"Flexible access to an abundance of low cost pure fibre capacity renders investments in traditional networks, especially copper, to deliver more capacity an exercise in strategic and commercial folly," added Hamlin.

CityFibre is also taking a lead on other matters of importance including regulation, holding high level discussions with Ofcom, and driving reform of fibre tax, aiming to establish an 'enterprise zone' that helps rather than hinders investment in infrastructure.

TalkTalk, Sky, Vodafone and the Federation of Communication Services (FCS) have launched the Fix Britain's Internet campaign in response to Ofcom's decision not to separate Openreach from the BT Group.

"The campaign marks a new beginning," stated FCS CEO Chris Pateman. "Openreach customers have had enough, and they are not willing to put up with another 10 years of fudge and compromise. 

"Ofcom needs to deliver an Openreach that is fit for the future, not simply re-working the past. That means a much stronger response, not a watered-down compromise.

"This campaign is our only chance this decade to move the industry forward."

Pateman believes that Ofcom's proposals do not go far enough to avoid another 'undertakings' situation. 

"Slapping a fresh coat of paint on the ship and re-arranging the deck chairs won't help when the crew's all working to rule," he stated. "Especially when the rule book is the whole BT corporate culture. 

"Ofcom's focus on creating competition at the reseller level has been a great success. But its failure to promote competition at the wholesale, network and backhaul level has played to BT's monopoly, stifled innovation and short-changed business customers who have no choice but to buy the connectivity BT chooses to make available in their area with unthinkable lead times." 

FCS is also concerned that Ofcom's proposals fall short on a number of key issues, including the make-up of an Openreach board and the refusal to consider full budgetary autonomy. 

"It is utter nonsense to talk of 'functional separation' when the Openreach CEO is appointed by, and reports to, the BT Group board," added Pateman.

"It is hard to see how Openreach can be simultaneously independent and tied to a 'spending envelope' and associated cost of capital which might bear no relationship to market rates."

Excell Group's acquisition of London-based City Voice and Data and City AVS adds considerable audio and video conferencing expertise to the business and boosts revenues to over £30m.

The Group will take on both teams of field engineers and ICT consultants and a London-based service desk.

The existing senior management team will continue to run the business, led by directors Robert Boyne and Alex Smith who will report into the Excell Group board.

Darren Strowger, Chairman of Excell Group, said: "The acquisition provides a strong foundation for Excell Group in the audio visual space, and is a great strategic fit for the evolution of our business, helping drive further cross selling opportunities within our enlarged base while also providing City Voice and City AVS customers with direct access to the Group's full portfolio of products and services."

Excell Group's Finance Director Edward Pettit (who heads up the acquisition strategy) said: "We are continuing to pursue our acquisition strategy with intensity.

"The Group has strong cash reserves, meaning we are well placed to quickly capitalise on other opportunities in the near future."

Robert Boyne, co-director of both City Voice and City AVS, added: "The acquisition marks an exciting time for the teams. Excell Group will allow us to continue nurturing our expertise and resource, while also significantly growing our offering."

The acquisition follows last year's purchase of the Resource Utilities and Green Mobile customer bases.

Fidelity Energy has unveiled its new price comparison portal for ICT resellers looking to add energy services to their portfolio.

The new portal allows reseller teams to compare 14 energy suppliers instantly, add their mark-up and send directly to customers.

Rob Baldacci, Managing Director at Peterborough-based GreenCity Solutions, says the portal has already given his business an edge over the big power firms.

"Selling energy is simple and transactional and because we are dealing with existing customers we have already developed a trust relationship which puts us ahead of faceless energy brokers and companies," he said.

"Adding energy to our portfolio with Fidelity made perfect sense, we can now offer our customers a fuller range of utility services.

"We know that our customers are being poorly served by their energy providers and are not being offered the best rates, sometimes paying up to 60% above the market rate.

"Following recent acquisitions we can support our communications s solutions with a nationally based, expert team of technicians and engineers and the addition of energy to the mix means our offering is rounded and thorough."

Sean Dixon, Partner Account Manager at Fidelity Energy, ADDED: "GreenCity haS been on the energy journey since the start of the year.

"Its team has grasped Fidelity's simple energy proposition and added this to its customer offering.

"Greencity's success has been due to their longstanding customer relationships that have taken years to build and are now realising an additional revenue stream with Fidelity Energy."