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back to article Sky confirms Easynet sell-off

And lo, it came to pass. Sky has announced it will sell Easynet to private equity house Lloyds Development Capital, which will back its current management. The deal is vauled at £100m, about half what Sky paid for Easynet in 2005. However, the Murdoch empire will retain the Easynet network and LLU infrastructure, which enticed …

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  1. NomesS
    Happy

    Wonderful news for Easynet

    Fantastic news, and congrats to David, Justin, and their team. David I hold in very high esteem as a business man. A man who always appears to make the right move at the right time where Easynet is concerned, and therefore unlike so many other ISP’s and Telcos whos history originated back some 15+ years ago and have long since disappeared, being mainly swallowed up and loosing their brand identity, and core company values. This has never been the case with Easynet & I wish them all the very best. Nomes

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  2. Fatboy40
    WTF?

    UK Online Customers ?

    So what could happen to UK Online customers ?. We've not been mentioned here at all, with UK Online being effectively the home user / small business arm of Easynet / BSKYB.

    Will the price we pay stay as it currently is with the 'long-term supply agreement', or should we expect price increases or changes to our service ?.

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  3. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Headmaster

    "Murdoch will retain the Easynet network and LLU"

    If the boy Murdoch (AFAIK he's the one running Sky) retains the network WTF is Lloyds Capital coughing up £100m for exactly?

    The Easynet name? that would make it quite a brand in the UK.

    Do they perhaps mean *use* of the network and retention of the Local Loop(which presumably means the customers billing and other details, so useful for selling off to other marketing companies).

    Yes I am being a pedantic grammar nazi, but if I'm wrong then Barclay's have handed out big bucks for well, not much.

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    1. Bill Cumming
      Reply Icon

      @John Smith 19

      The group is buying "Easynet Global Services" which is the business to business side of the organization.

      Sky will still own "Easynet UK" it's that bit that owns the LLU equipment and wires.

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      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Up

        @Bill Cumming

        Thought so.

        On *that* basis this does seem like quite an astute bit of business. BSkyB bankrolls what I presume is some substantial backbone growth (hopefully a *lot* over the actual need of BSkyB subscribers) then they get out from under with an ongoing revenue stream will they grow their B2B customer base.

        I'm not sure how many have *ever* escaped the clutches of Rupe and his would be clan with an intact business.

        Thumbs up.

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  4. Jeff 11

    Easynet? Maybe they'll finally learn...

    ...not to plonk their whole Birmingham POP customer list in the To: field? We've had about one instance of this per year, and we haven't even been their customers for the last three. They also had a peculiar habit of locking out their own engineers when said POP went down, and took two weeks to resolve a trivial SDSL issue - but then we did get that SDSL for free for a year after they were supposed to have switched it off.

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  6. Jimmy Floyd
    Thumb Up

    Good

    Easynet were the one thing I liked about Sky. They may produce mind-numbingly shite television, 'news' and sport, suitable mainly for the inept, inbred and downright retarded - but unfortunately their broadband was (is?) pretty good.

    Now I may comfortably detest the entire organisation without restraint. That makes life much simpler.

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  7. lotuswolf
    Thumb Down

    Lloyds Capital will expect their pound of flesh.....

    .....and they will get it, extracting maximum value out of the business (i.e Bleed it dry) before then disposing of the carcass choppity-chop, oh wait, Deja Vu!

    Watching the telecomms industry is like watching nature at work. One company falls prey to another, get's outsted from it's den/has food stolen, then falls prey to smaller and smaller beasts who take what they want to until finally it's just a scattering of bones.

    If anyone thinks anything other then they seriously have not watched what has happened in the industry over the last 10 years at least. Employees suffer, customers suffer, management gain and shareholders gain, thank you very much and good night.

    Nice knowing you Easynet, I expect a small little piece in the Reg in about 5 years announcing the burial of some bones found somewhere in London.

    Oh, and don't criticise Nomes, he's right in one respect, David and Justin will do extremely well out of this, they'll grab what they can on the way down and then jump ship onto the next big beast that they like the look of (Cycle and repeat), I don't know about "the team" though, but hey, they are nameless anyway, casn easily be sacrificed (As they will be).

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