Rural Wireless and FTTP ISP LonsdaleNET Acquired by Voneus

Fixed wireless and full fibre UK ISP LonsdaleNET (Lonsdale Network Services), which have recently been building a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network into remote rural parts of Cumbria’s Eden District, has just been acquired by Voneus for an undisclosed sum.

Until recently LonsdaleNET was more of a Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) provider, but over the past couple of years they’ve moved into “full fibre” (here) and today both sides of their network serve around 1,000 homes in rural Cumbria. In fact, it’s not dissimilar to how Voneus started, until they got several large injections of private investment (here).

At present Voneus is targeting a potentially addressable market of c.900,000 homes for their FTTP and wireless networks, although recently a fair bit of their growth has tended to flow from an on-going spree of strategic acquisitions, which has targeted ISPs that operate in the same sort of areas as they do.

Recently it came to our attention, while snooping on the company records of various ISPs, that Voneus Limited had gained “significant control” of LonsdaleNET. A spokesperson for the ISP soon confirmed this and said that they are “currently in the process of contacting each of LonsdaleNET’s customers to notify them of the change.”

We don’t at present know the full detail of this acquisition, but it clearly opens up a new market for Voneus in Cumbria.