Unicom’s Parent VERASTAR Gobbles UK ISP Business Comms Solutions

Telecoms and broadband company VERASTAR (aka – Universal Utilities / Unicom), which was fined £200k by Ofcom last year after they were found to have mislead consumers (here and here), has confirmed that they’ve finalised the purchase of Premier Calls parent company, Business Comms Solution.

Curiously there’s been no formal announcement about the deal, although one of our readers noted that the company had confirmed the development via a post on the UK Business Forums. Apparently customers of Premier Calls will also be having their broadband connections transferred to TalkTalk’s network (we assume that’s the wholesale side).

The purchase comes after Business Comms Solution Ltd (also trading under the Advantage, Optimum, Premier and Talk Plus brands) confirmed during January 2016 that it had been in dispute with its former wholesale provider of telecoms services, Club Communications which trades as Nine Wholesale, as well as Nine Wholesale’s sister company, Nine Telecom.

The dispute was settled and a joint statement issued to say that, “Both BCS and Nine Wholesale/Nine Telecom regret any confusion or inconvenience that may have arisen from our recent communications and are glad that we can now draw a line under our dispute. Thank you for your understanding and co operation.”

Unfortunately the situation caught a lot of customers up in the middle and further confusion began occurring in February after customers reported that their phone and broadband connections were changed without prior notification, which appears to be due to the VERASTAR purchase.

Verastar Statement

In response to comment surrounding Premier Calls in recent days. We would like to confirm that Verastar Ltd have finalised the purchase of Premier Calls parent company, Business Comms Solution Ltd.

Verastar appreciate that this has been a confusing time for Premier Calls customers and we thank you for your patience. You will continue to be serviced and invoiced by Premier Calls.

Whilst we aim to continue to deliver an outstanding service during this period we understand there may be questions or issues. We will endeavour to answer or resolve these as swiftly as possible via our customer services: phone 0845 241 4668.

Naturally some customers are feeling quite unhappy at the lack of communication and unexpected service changes, which also seems to have caused several subscribers to lose their telephone numbers and other service features (most likely due to the swap from a WLR to MPF unbundled line service).