Comms Dealer

AIM-listed CityFibre has acquired Mobeus-backed Entanet for £29m in a cash deal that enables the alternative fibre infrastructure provider to focus on wholesale fibre services and speed up the commercialisation of its fibre assets. CityFibre expects to realise synergies of over £3m per annum within three years by combining its fibre infrastructure with Entanet's wholesale products, systems and relationships with channel partners.

Entanet has over 1,500 channel partners which substantially increases CityFibre's wholesale capabilities and its relationships with service providers.

The combined businesses create a wholesale provider with full fibre infrastructure, giving Entanet's partners access to CityFibre's growing national footprints to deliver gigabit-speed services.

These will be offered alongside Entanet's existing connectivity portfolio of fixed, wireless and mobile data connectivity services as well as hosted voice and telecoms.

Entanet CEO Elsa Chen (pictured) said: "Our partners will soon be able to take a strong and highly competitive proposition to the market, reaping the rewards of CityFibre's national full fibre infrastructure footprints and next generation products.

"They will continue to enjoy the full support of Entanet's long-established and mature channel strategy.

"Together, we are creating a new breed of wholesale service provider that will empower channel partners to change the connectivity market landscape."

CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch (pictured above) said: "With Entanet now part of the CityFibre family, our combined offering will accelerate the take-up of services over our growing network footprints, leveraging Entanet's channel partner network and continuing to transform digital connectivity for thousands of UK businesses."

CityFibre also intends to double its market value by raising a further £200m – £185m of which will be underwritten by Citigroup, finnCap, Liberum and Macquarie. CityFibre aims to raise further proceeds through an accelerated bookbuilding process and additional proceeds of up to £15m through a non-underwritten offer for subscription.

CityFibre plans to expand its fibre metro networks from 42 UK towns and cities today to not less than 50 towns and cities by 2020; and will begin constructing a Fibre to the Home FTTH) network to address the residential market in five to ten UK towns and cities during 2018.

This follows CityFibre's successful participation in the FTTH trial in York which demonstrated strong demand from ISPs and consumers for gigabit speed FTTH services.

CityFibre is now in advanced negotiations with ISPs that will market full-fibre broadband services to consumers, deployed over its networks.

Mesch added: "We are building Gigabit Britain, driven by growing demand from Internet Service Providers and their customers to switch to full-fibre infrastructure.

"Our announcement to enter the residential market is the first step in our vision to bring gigabit connectivity to millions of UK homes and small businesses.

"This is about more than just better broadband - this is about future-proofing the digital infrastructure we've all come to rely on at work, at school, at home and in our communities. It's also about stimulating the market, creating jobs and growth.

"The Government and Ofcom recognise that investment in alternative fibre networks will catalyse growth in the UK's digital economy as well as reduce the country's reliance on BT Openreach.

"With Entanet now part of the CityFibre family, our combined offering will accelerate the take-up of services over our growing network footprints, leveraging Entanet's channel partner network and continuing to transform digital connectivity for thousands of UK businesses.

"Today's capital raising also better positions CityFibre to undertake larger projects coming forward with the public sector as well as mobile operators in readiness for their small-cell roll-outs and 5G services."

Megabuyte analyst and Comms Dealer contributor Philip Carse commented: "The announcement is yet another signpost in what is clearly very strong investor support for fibre network infrastructure, and comes barely a day after the launch of the UK Government’s own £400m fund, which is aimed at triggering a total of £1bn investment, and few weeks after Gigaclear raised another £111m. 

"In particular, this funding is aimed at full fibre infrastructure, taking it to the premise rather than the fibre to the cabinet variety preferred by BT, which inevitably limits the speeds available. 

"We assume that BT’s competitors such as Sky and TalkTalk will be leading the queue to use the new FTTP networks, whilst a whole host of B2B service providers will increasingly start to use CityFibre metro networks, rather than rely wholly on BT Openreach or BT Wholesale.

"Meanwhile, the Entanet acquisition appears expensive at first blush, but comes with a compelling strategic rationale in terms of gaining a large swathe of wholesale partners as well as access to systems (a focus for Entanet investment over the past couple of years). 

"It will also boost CityFibre’s engineering and software development employee base. Mesch also noted that Entanet’s existing customer base will provide strong support for expanding to certain new towns and cities. The price looks much more modest if the target £3m per annum synergies can be achieved."

Panasonic Business has appointed Nuvias as its first pan-EMEA distributor for its range of business IP phone handsets.

The initial roll-out will focus on established markets for Nuvias, including the UK, Benelux, Germany and France, along with Southern Europe and the Nordics.

"As a full end-to-end unified communications solution provider, backed up with the technical skills and experience to support service providers and resellers, Nuvias adds an exciting new dimension to our distribution across EMEA," said Raphael Studer, European Partner Account Manager for SIP Products at Panasonic System Communications Europe.

"The Nuvias Unified Communications Practice will be able to replicate its well-proven and successful model to drive sales through both existing and new channel partners."

Steve Harris, EVP Unified Communications for Nuvias (and formerly managing director of SIPHON Networks), commented: "Panasonic is one of a number of unified communications vendors taking advantage of Nuvias' growing UC capability to increase EMEA sales.

"Nuvias' drive to expand its Unified Communications Practice will also help existing and new reseller/integrator channel partners across EMEA to benefit from the opportunities presented by the rapidly expanding UC market."

Appliances for backup are falling out of favour in EMEA as purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) vendor revenues declined 12% year over year to reach $191m in the first quarter of 2017, according to IDC.

Capacity shipped for 1Q17 totalled 235PB, an increase of 5% from 1Q16, but this growth mainly came from open systems products, with capacity increasing 11% year on year. Total EMEA PBBA open systems vendor revenue decreased 11% year on year during the first quarter, with revenues of $178m.

Vendor revenue in Western Europe was down 8% year on year in 1Q17 to $156m.

"Although the economic and political turmoil is still impacting consumer confidence, delaying modernisation investment projects are negatively affecting the PBBA market in some Western European economies, but PBBA spending increased in other countries such as the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway) at 57% YoY, Italy at 29% YoY, and Netherlands at 21%.

The PBBA market in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) is slowing down the trend of recovery significantly and declined 24% year on year in 1Q17. This is very close to the 25% decline in 1Q16.

Growing IaaS provider OVH has closed a 400m euro funding round from a pool of nine banks to support its five-year global expansion strategy.

The France-headquartered firm currently has 270,000 servers deployed within 20 data centres across five countries in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

OVH delivers its cloud services - private, public and hybrid - to more than one million customers worldwide and it generated revenues of almost 400m euro for the year.

"This new investment will permit OVH to follow its global expansion strategy, which began in autumn 2016 with a 250m euro investment from KKR and TowerBrook," said OVH.

OVH had previously announced an ambitious development and investment plan worth 1.5bn euro. The company has already begun the execution of this plan, notably with the opening of data centres in new geographical zones. A total of three data centres are now located in Australia, Singapore and Poland, with a fourth and a fifth under construction in Germany and the UK (which will eventually have a total of three data centres).

Nicolas Boyer, chief financial officer of the OVH group, said: "This new financing provides us with an increasingly robust banking pool, renewing confidence in the group's international strategy and positioning. In addition, the entry of US investment bank JP Morgan into this pool reflects our position as a global player in cloud computing.

"We will continue to implement our strategic plan through international deployment, consolidation of our position in the digital market, acceleration of our growth among enterprise customers, and by reinforcement and structuring of our organisation to take full advantage of market opportunities."

Citrix has appointed Darren Fields as Regional Director, UK & Ireland, reporting to Michelle Senecal de Fonseca, Area VP for Northern Europe.

Fields joins Citrix from Vodafone Group Enterprise where he was Head of Northern Europe Cloud & Hosting, a division within the business.

He has held a number of internationally focused senior leadership roles across a variety of hardware, software and telecoms companies.

Prior to joining Vodafone he was global head of sales, cloud services at Telefonica, where he was responsible for executing an IaaS business strategy in Brazil, Germany, Spain and the UK.

Content Guru is confirmed as a Key Supporter at Enhancing Housing Services Through Innovation & Technology 2017, organised by GovNet.

The conference takes place on Tuesday 11th July at Victoria Park Plaza, London, and includes a variety of talks and seminars, as well as an exhibition showcasing digital solutions for social housing.

The conference will bring together organisations that provide technological solutions to the social housing sector, with senior leaders from central and local government, Housing Associations and related charities in attendance.

The event aims to increase operational efficiency and overhaul industry practices across the social housing sector, through digital transformation and raised levels of tenant engagement.

Martin Taylor, CMO and Head of Public Sector at Content Guru, commented: "The social housing sector is under increasing pressure to solve the housing crisis and improve tenant experience through innovation and cost-effectiveness.

"The spotlight is now firmly on the safety requirements of social housing, adding this to the list of key issues to address."

The Government's new £400m Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund falls way short of the mark, claims Lorrin White, MD of ICT firm Bamboo Technology Group.

"Any investment in our national broadband infrastructure is to be welcomed, but £400m falls well short of what is needed to bring true fibre-to-the-premise to everywhere that needs it," she said.

"Roads and railways are still important, but reliable, widely available, and high-quality Internet connectivity is the most critical infrastructure for growth in the 21st Century, yet we are quickly falling behind the rest of Europe when it comes to broadband speeds.

"This challenge will only be compounded by Brexit. The need to invest in our critical national infrastructure has never been more urgent."

Three Daisy Wholesale partners will join Sir Ben Ainslie and the Land Rover Ben Ainslie Racing team to sail in the Solent as winners of an incentive scheme.

Jola Cloud Solutions, KSM Telecom and Solution Consultants ICT will join the British challenger for the 25th America's Cup and sail on-board the Foiling 'AC45' with Sir Ben Ainslie himself.

Garry Growns, Sales Director of Daisy Wholesale, said: "These three partners sold the greatest number of seats of our hosted voice solution, HV.Select.

"We're delighted to be able to offer these once in a lifetime experiences as incentives to our partners, and to reward them for their fantastic sales achievements."

Over 150 SpliceCom partners descended on events in Southampton, Heathrow and Manchester to gain first hand insights into the vendor's latest services and products

Unveiled were the SelectVoice 1,000 IP voice platform for cloud, on-premise and blended deployment; an admin portal; Yealink SIP phone integration; Macfarlane conversation management Contact Centre; Navigate II IP softphone/phone partner with Skype for Business integration; WebPartner client portal; Vision v1.7 Business Management & Call Centre; and ISIP ISDN to SIP Converter.

Splicecom also launched IRIS, its new reseller portal and a new accreditation scheme.

"With this year's launch, our whole focus has been on making life easier for our channel partners," said Head of Sales for the UK and Ireland, Stuart Bell.

"With SelectVoice we've taken huge steps forward when it comes to selling, installing and maintaining our solutions.

"And by extending our support for SIP handsets, in particular Yealink's extensive range of desktop and wireless devices, we've widened our addressable market."

CityFibre's Mark Collins, Director of Strategy and Policy at CityFibre, has responded positively to the Government's new Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund.

"We welcome the launch of the DIIF fund. Addressing the yawning fibre gap which sees the UK at just 2% full fibre penetration versus countries like Spain on 80% is essential," he said.

"This fund will help to underpin investor confidence and catalyse competitive full fibre roll-out. We look forward to engaging with government to explore how the DIIF could accelerate our future plans."