This week in the ICT Channel

Every friday morning, Comms Dealer magazine rounds up the top channel news that broke during the week.

In this week's news...

YFM backs ￡18.1m buyout of Smart Numbers

YFM Equity Partners (YFM) has backed the management buyout of Smart Comms , led by incumbent MD Tim Hutchings .

The investment will enable Southampton-based Smart Numbers can take full advantage of developing market conditions and pursue its growth ambitions as it broadens its customer reach.

Hutchings said: "Our business is now ideally placed to pursue a new era of growth and to position itself as a go-to communications provider of digital marketing telephony for increasing numbers of small businesses in the UK and North America.”

Richard Last , former Chair of Gamma, joins the business as non-executive chair to support the company’s growth strategy, with Nathan Willis remaining as Finance Director.

Scott Woolaway will continue to hold a significant shareholding in the business, retaining a position on the board post-investment as Vice Chairman.

Vorboss launches channel-only 25Gbps solution

Vorboss has launched a 25Gbps solution exclusively for its channel partners, to help them reach more businesses.

The offering is designed to act as a step between 10Gbps to 100Gbps, which involves a substantial investment in new equipment.

Tim Creswick , Vorboss CEO, said: “We are now offering 10, 25 and 100Gbps services all as standard products.

“Initial feedback from our MSP partners has been very positive, as it gives them something new and unique to engage their data-hungry customers with.”

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Vodafone UK retires 3G across the UK

The process of retiring 3G began with a customer awareness campaign which started in January 2022.?

The 3G switch off is part of a wider network modernisation programme which includes the rollout of faster 5G and 4G services to more locations across the UK.

Vodafone ’s UK Network Director, Andrea Donà , said: “The 3G legacy switch off has been a massive programme.

With switch off complete, we can start to redeploy the remaining spectrum which will ultimately lead to stronger and faster 4G and 5G across the UK. “

Telecom Acquisitions attains record customer additions

Telecom Acquisitions Limited has achieved a record trading quarter with 22,000 new residential broadband customers signed up since last autumn.

The three businesses in the TAL Group; Home Telecom , Fleur Telecom Ltd and Eclipse Broadband , have secured 16,000 customers via acquisitions and strategic partnerships, plus 6,000 more organically.

CEO Nigel Barnett said: “Our focus on the residential broadband supply sector will provide rapid growth for the group, with the support of the ISPs and large altnets we have partnered with.” This includes CityFibre , MS3 Networks Limited , FullFibre Limited and Freedom Fibre .

To increase organic growth, TAL has signed a marketing deal to bring its brand to houses on the footprints of CityFibre and TalkTalk across the UK.

TAL will shortly announce a new wholesale offering to UK resellers and ISPs, plus a Layer 3 service.

Barnett adds: “In the last 15 months we have grown to circa 100,000 customers, returning a ￡40m turnover. With further acquisitions on the horizon were looking forward to a very successful 2024.”

Fournet extends reach of Antenna solution

FourNet ’s Antenna solution, designed in partnership with the Cabinet Office, is expanding to cover all UK Critical National Infrastructure providers.?

Antenna was initially designed as a shared communication, collaboration and contact centre service for Central Government in 2016. It is currently used by more than 40 UK government departments.

Richard Pennington , CEO of FourNet,?said: “This solution has been designed for critical national infrastructure providers who have bigger barriers to digital transformation and a much higher responsibility and duty of care when it comes to cybersecurity, protection of data, and digital resilience.”

Antenna is hosted in Tier 4 Government Data Centres and offers a range of technology partners including voice, mobile, contact centre, video, messaging and collaboration solutions.

Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you back here next friday for the latest news update. Be sure to subscribe at the top of this newsletter to get your copy.