Business UK ISP Onecom Acquires Customers of Rival 9 Group

Hampshire-based business broadband ISP Onecom, which is backed by a £100m funding package from LDC and Ares Management Corporation (here), has added 450 indirect channel partners and over 5,000 telephony, hosted voice and on-premise customers after acquiring 9 Group (9 Retail and 9 Partners) for an undisclosed sum.

The deal, which was announced last week, marks Oncom’s fourth strategic acquisition since the LDC investment was agreed in mid-2019, with Olive Communications most recently being hoovered up in February 2021 and Glamorgan Telecom joining the club last August 2020.

The 9 Group companies are expected to keep their current branding and will continue to trade separately, albeit benefitting from Onecom’s resources and investment. The founder and CEO of 9 Group, James Palmer, will remain actively involved with the business along with his existing management team.

Martin Flick, Onecom CEO, said:

“This is a highly significant strategic acquisition for Onecom Group, strengthening our portfolio and further diversifying our revenue streams by adding a large non-mobile telephony provider and a fantastic channel partner community as a new route to market in one move.

Supporting and investing in channel partners is essential to our ambition as we go forward. We have a well-established footprint in enterprise and the mid-market and the acquisition will help us, through valued partners, drive sales of our exceptional products and services to businesses of all sizes, with a high degree of proximity to customer need that only a channel can deliver to SMBs at this scale.

For the Onecom team to have made two such important acquisitions in such a short space of time, and during the pandemic, is testament to the strength of our team and our ability to drive growth and consolidation in this competitive market, with strong support from our investment partners LDC.

Onecom founder Darren Ridge has been instrumental in working with James to forge the opportunity our enlarged group now represents and I am hugely excited to be leading the team in growing and developing the strategy to the benefit of our mutual customers and channel partners alike.

Both our direct and indirect sales teams now have the combined benefit of huge management experience, access to an unrivalled portfolio of complementary products and services, and market leading billing, online management and support capabilities.”

It’s noted that the former 9 Group company, eve Networks, and the group’s separate IT business, are not part of the deal and will remain under their existing ownership.