iiNet said to be buying TransACT

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 16 November 2011 13:38

IT Industry - Deals

Trading in iiNet shares was suspended today after the Financial Review reported that it was about to buy ACT and Victorian HFC and FTTH network operator TransACT.

Apart from giving iiNet a significant boost in customer numbers, the acquisition would also give it an entre into the corporate market for data centre and other services. TransACT counts 50 federal and state government agencies among its customers and during the course of this year it has been appointed by AGIMO to four government IT services provider panels: telecommunications, data centre, Internet and Network Connection Services. The latter is a panel that gives government bodies access to telecommunications carriage services, including major Internet connections.
 
TransACT claims revenues of around $100m annually and 150,000 'product customers', including over 5000 SMEs. It provides broadband, fixed line telephony services, mobile phone, subscription TV, video on demand, ISP services and data centre services.

iiNet and TransACT already have a relationship: iiNet has a range of broadband Internet plans offered only to people connected to the TransACT network.

TransACT started in the ACT in 2000 and expanded into Victoria in 2008 when it bought HFC cable network operator, Neighbourhood Cable. It now has networks in Canberra, Queanbeyan, Ballarat, Geelong and Mildura. The company has 300 employees in the ACT and Victoria.

In 2009 it became the first ISP in Australia to offer FTTH services at 100Mbps. The FTTH network had been in place for some time but the company had restricted services to 30Mbps to align with what it was able to over copper using VDSL2.