The beleaguered ispONE has been acquired by CONEC2, a Melbourne telecom and IT provider.
CONEC2 announced today it had acquired “core assets” from the ispONE business. That includes the customers of ONEseniors, One Mobile and One Telecom, as well as services to Medion under the Aldi Mobile brand. In addition, CONEC2 will take ispONE’s integrated billing operations and support system (iBOSS), a high volume and automated provisioning, billing and operational software platform.
After losing a legal battle last month with Telstra Wholesale, ispONE went into voluntary administration, taking down Kogan Mobile in the process. The administrator, Ferrier Hodgson partner Stewart McCallum, said the sale raised significant interest.
“We extended the expression of interest period to accommodate the large number of parties that came forward,” McCallum said. “Many were credible buyers and the level of interest drove a competitive bidding process.”
CONEC2 group chief executive, Cameron Adams, said the acquisition would drive national and international growth of CONEC2.
“We have undergone strong growth in the past few years, resulting in CONEC2 now supplying services to some of Australia’s largest businesses and Retail Service Providers (RSP),” he said. “This timely acquisition of the ispONE assets fits in well with our strategy to grow the business further both in Australia and in the Asian region.”
Adams said the iBOSS platform would be a key to his company’s future growth. “The iBOSS platform’s capability to bill and provision wholesale clients is fundamental in extending our business proposition to clients as well as a hosted and white label services.”
CONEC2 plans to take on all of ispONE’s staff, Adams said. “Our main focus over coming weeks will be to spend individual time with each staff member and each of the RSP customers, as we integrate the teams of both organisations,” he said.
CONEC2 acquired ispONE through its subsidiary AsiaPAC Communications Group. The parties did not disclose the sale price of the transaction, saying it is confidential.
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