Business Serve buys VoIP outfit

Lancaster-based ISP, Business Serve, has snapped up yet another trinket this time splashing out £600,000 in cash and paper for telecoms and VoIP outfit Pipemedia. Today's acquisition - which includes an extra £1.5m in performance-related payouts - is the twelfth for Business Serve over the last two years and the sixth since it floated on AIM in February this year.

As a provider of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and broadband telephone services to both corporate and carrier customers, Pipemedia gives Business Serve another product to bolt on to its service and offer to subscribers. Although Pipemedia only has several hundred VoIP users at the moment, Business Serve expects this to increase markedly over the coming months as it spends money to market the product.

Said Business Serve boss Simon Cleaver: "We will now be able to offer 'a one-stop-shop' for the provision of both traditional ISP products such as web hosting and broadband, as well as telecommunication services such as carrier pre-selection and VoIP - with all the substantial cost savings that this new service brings."

According to the latest unaudited accounts Pipemedia generated revenues of £2.64m in the year to the end of May and a pre-tax loss of £122,000.

Business Serve has s40,000 business customers throughout the UK and employs more than 200 people across five main locations in Lancaster, Manchester, Bradford, Leicester and London. ®

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