Redstone Telecom buys FastNet

The channel lost another independent network integrator last week, when Redstone Telecom paid £40m for FastNet Systems, the 3Com and Cisco reseller.

The channel lost another independent network integrator last week, when Redstone Telecom paid £40m for FastNet Systems, the 3Com and Cisco reseller.

Ian Brown, FastNet's founder, who reputedly stands to make £12m from the deal, said the move was driven by changing market conditions. "It's about convergence, not only between voice and data but between local area network and wide area network. It's about supplying end-to-end communications infrastructure, including telco circuits."

Brown said the combination of telco and data networking integrator will be a differentiator among companies planning to offer application service provision.

"In my opinion, a lot of the service level agreements (SLAs) offered today aren't worth the paper they're written on. We will be able to offer SLAs right up to the desktop," he said.

FastNet joins Jaguar Communications, Voyager Networks, Datarange Communications and Workplace Technologies as networking integrators that have been bought by telcos.

Brown said he was pleased to be joining a smaller, entrepreneurial company and added that FastNet's management will stay in place. "No redundancies are planned. If anything, we will increase our recruitment drive," he said.

Redstone said that FastNet would also be used to provide digital subscriber line services to business customers.

Graham Cove, Redstone's chief executive, said: "This deal takes us into data markets in a big way."

Redstone plans to make more acquisitions of business-focused internet service providers, said Cove.