Britain's Cable & Wireless said on Thursday it had signed a wholesale agreement with Pipex Communications Plc expected to be worth in excess of 250 million pounds ($470.8 million) over five years.
The contract to supply broadband and telecoms services provider Pipex with the unbundled local loop access network came as Pipex said it had acquired the residential and small business broadband customer base of Cable & Wireless's Bulldog unit for 12 million pounds in cash.
At the same time, Pipex reported a 100 percent increase in pretax profit before amortisation to 3.2 million pounds for the six months to end-June, from 1.6 million in the same period last year.
Pipex Chairman Peter Dubens said early signs since the end of June were that broadband sales are up 50 percent and brand awareness of Pipex in the UK has been boosted by a large scale advertising campaign featuring former Knight Rider and Baywatch star David Hasselhoff.
Dubens said a 24 million pound acquisition of the UK business of Toucan from IDT Telecom, also announced on Thursday, would give it access to its mobile phone network as well as an additional 185,000 voice and broadband customers. Twenty million pounds of the deal will be paid for in cash, and the rest in stock. Pipex said it now has a broadband and voice customer base of 1.14 million of which more than 570,000 take broadband. Shares in Pipex were up 0.3 percent at 10.09 pence at 0832 GMT, valuing the company at 232 million pounds.