Easynet to buy Maiaah!

Easynet - the pan-European broadband operation - is to buy French Internet outfit Maiaah! for around €100,000.

Maiaah! is a high-end provider of wide area network (WAN) Internet connectivity in France and notched up revenues of €2.4m for the first ten months of 2002.

Easynet predicts Maiaah! will make a profit in Q2 2003 and will also help its French operation move into the black more quickly.

Today's announcement was bundled with a trading statement in which Easynet reported that its broadband infrastructure roll-out continues to proceed on target.

One of the few remaining companies still involved in local loop unbundling (LLU), Easynet met ahead of schedule its 2002 target of unbundling 80 exchanges by year end.

It has also almost doubled the number of unbundled DSL customers since August, from 854 to more than 1,500.

The result of this activity is that Easynet now accounts for nine out of ten of all unbundled copper lines in the UK.

Furthermore, the average revenues per user (ARPUs) from UK DSL customers now exceeds £1,500 - up from £1,380 at the beginning of the year.

This increase in revenue per punter is being driven by new unbundled products such as higher bandwidth 4Mb and 8Mb ADSL and SDSL, the company said. ®