BT Group is trying for a third time to crack the US
market with the purchase of Infonet Services for $965m
(£520m).
Infonet operates in more than 70 countries and supplies services
such as virtual private networks and ATM (asynchronous transfer
mode), to thousands of multinational companies, including Nestle
and Hitachi. However, it is loss-making.
Its shareholders are six network operators from across the
world, all of whom thought they had hit the big time during the
dotcom boom when Infonet was valued at $10bn. They have all agreed
to sell their shares to BT.
BT's reason for buying Infonet is the company's 1,800
multinational customers that BT wants to get hold of, in particular
in the US.
Existing customers will also benefit from Infonet's technology,
BT claimed - cutting-edge fault management, order management,
pricing and billing systems and tools.
"Infonet customers will for the first time be able to acquire
in-country, as well as international, managed network services from
a single truly global source," BT said. "In addition, BT expects to
offer its portfolio of IT services, outsourcing solutions and its
voice communications products to the Infonet customer base.
"Recognising the quality of both product sets and their
importance to both sets of customers, BT intends to operate both
platforms in parallel for some time. The integration and
harmonisation of these will be managed so as to continue the best
of both for the combined business and its customers."
Kieren McCarthy writes for Techworld