Livewire internet firms join forces

Two pioneering Sheffield-based Broadband suppliers, that lead their specialist fields, are joining forces to boost services for business.

Milton Street-based student services specialist Ask4 has scored a major coup by acquiring Quadrant Business Centre-based W2, which provides high quality internet and ICT services to small and medium-sized companies, mainly based in business incubators and parks. Ask4 had previously sought to buy W2, but approaches came to naught.

"We heard last week that W2 had gone in to administration and we thought we'd have a look at it," says Ask4's managing director, Jonathan Hudson.

"We had to work pretty quickly to make sure the deal was done. We are keeping on the staff and will be going round all W2's customers over the next fortnight, explaining how we will look after them.

"W2 is a natural fit into our business subsidiary, Ask4 Business. The acquisition brings new services to the table and a profitable client base. We wanted to make sure that a local company still supported the local client base."

Ask4 started out in 2000, providing Internet services to Sheffield's West1 apartments and went on to connect the Wards' Brewery development.

Its major growth came after targeting the burgeoning number of new student apartments springing up in Sheffield and other parts of the country and it now provides broadband services to 50,000 students in flats and houses in cities that include Sheffield, London, Birmingham and Nottingham.

The company has its own fibre optic cable network, which supplies customers as far away as Dundee, Cardiff and London, and installed a fibre optic ring around the centre of Sheffield as part of the completion of the inner city ring road.

Ask4 has provided services to businesses for a number of years and has received an increasing number of approaches from the corporate sector recently, says Jonathan Hudson.

Acquiring W2 – formerly known as the Wired Workplace – gives Ask4 a platform on which it can broaden its services for business

W2 is Sheffield Chamber of Commerce's preferred supplier for IT and telecoms and Ask4 had to move rapidly to snap up the business after it was put into administration.

The deal includes W2's hi-tech data centre in Sheffield, which was designed to house up to 600 servers, capable of storing 300 terabytes of data – enough information to fill almost a third of a million encyclopaedias.

- By Bob Rae