UK Business ISP Timico Gobbles Telecoms Division of Coms Plc

The telecoms interests of business ISP Coms, which in 2013 merged ADSL24’s old broadband subscriber base into their operations (here), have been scooped up by Timico in a deal worth £2.5 million (a further £1m could also become payable depending on the businesses performance).

Customers, particularly those who have stuck with Coms despite a sometimes difficult migration from ADSL24, will no doubt experience mixed feelings about the latest development. On the other hand Timico has a reasonably strong reputation in the industry and that could be a welcome benefit.

Tim Radford, CEO of Timico, said:

“We are delighted to be welcoming Coms customers into the Timico family. We are a well-funded, stable business already trusted to look after the communications needs of more than 12,000 UK companies. I am confident that the structured support and expertise we can offer qualifies us as a safe pair of hands to take on these new customers.

Our strategic account management and client services teams are fully-briefed and ready to get to know their new customers. We have built our business through a healthy combination of organic and acquisition-led growth. As well as a team of quality people, we have all the necessary building blocks in place – from billing and CRM systems to online customer portals and service monitoring tools – to ensure our customers are well looked after from the day they join us.”

Little is known about the precise reasoning for this move, although Coms has been going through some restructuring (they recently moved and consolidated their offices) and intend to focus on other aspects of the business. At the time Coms said in its April newsletter that there were “exciting times ahead“, although we’re not sure if today’s news would qualify.

As usual in such situations the affected customers, many of which have yet to be informed about the development, will no doubt have many questions about the impact upon their service and prices. Currently there appear to be no clear answers for those queries, although hopefully Timico will not enforce any overly negative changes.