[00-7-18] Cable & Wireless Scoops Up Five More European ISPs
By Steve Gold, Newsbytes.
LONDON, ENGLAND,
18 Jul 2000, 7:41 AM CST
Cable & Wireless Scoops Up Five More European ISPs 07/18/00 LONDON, ENGLAND, 2000 JUL 18 (NB) -- By Steve Gold, Newsbytes. Continuing its checkbook waving spree, Cable & Wireless plc (CWC) announced this morning that it is acquiring another five Internet firms across Europe for a cool $100 million.
The deal - scooping up France's Pictime, Germany's POP GmbH, Widexs and Impact Group of the Netherlands and with Spain's Eaisa Group - makes CWC the largest Internet operator in Europe, adding to the group's existing 15 companies it has acquired since the start of 1999.
What's interesting about the five new acquisitions is that they are "quality" Internet operations, having around 30,000 subscribers between them. The move is in keeping with CWC's promise to reinvent itself as a global player following the sale of its Hong Kong operations to Pacific Century Cyberworks.
CWC has already committed $3.5 billion to an upgraded global Internet backbone and allied facilities. The carrier said it has already spent $650 million on its pan-European backbone service, a move which has seen the carrier move its European HQ from London to Paris.
The company said it can now provide business customers in Austria, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK with a wide range of Internet services.
Graham Wallace, CWC's CEO, said that the investments are part of the carrier's aggressive expansion into European business IP to meet the rapidly growing demand for e-business products.
"They're part of our global focus on the fast growing demand from business customers for IP services," he said.
CWC's Web site is at cwcom.co.uk .
Reported by Newsbytes.com, newsbytes.com .
07:41 CST
(20000718/Press Contact: Douglas Long, Brodeur PR +44-1753-790700; Bob Thomas. CWC +44-20-7674-5443 /WIRES ONLINE, BUSINESS, TELECOM/)
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