Carrier1

I joined the Providence Equity Partners backed startup telco just after it had collected its first revenue to set up the Indirect Access business. This covered indirect access phone calls, number translation services (free phone and premium rate) and dial up internet access (managed modems).

I was responsible for rolling out services in the UK, France, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Austria and Netherlands, growing revenue to £75m. My largest client was AOL for whom we ran the first flat rate internet access products in the UK and Germany.

The business was floated on the NASDAQ and Neuer Markt in 2002; it was one of the largest European IPOs of the dot com era (around £4bn market cap) becoming one of the most significant voice carriers in Europe, as well as handling around 25% of Europe’s internet traffic.  The original network that we built, having had a string of successive owners, still carries a significant proportion of the continent’s data.