Well, it was quiet, but now M&A is heating up with the weather.
"Private equity firm GTCR has acquired NewWave Communications from Pamlico Capital." NewWave is a cable company in the Midwest with 90,000 subs.
Iotum acquired FreeConference.com when it bought the assets of GCP. Calliflower is a conferencing service owned by iotum.
Evolve IP now calling itself the trademarked Evolve IP, The Cloud Services Company™, has "announced that it has completed the purchase and customer integration of iPiphany of Chicago, Illinois and Semperon of West Chester, Pennsylvania. All three companies are on Broadsoft, so integration should have been easy. I wonder if this is the start of the Broadsoft service provider consolidation.
Infonetics announced its US Hosted VoIP winners. Comcast came in first again. Comcast is likely Broadsoft's largest customer in the US for Hosted PBX. (XO is supposedly its largest US customer, but XO mainly sells SIP Trunking.)
Think about this: in 2003, Broadsoft's second customer started up with Hosted PBX, which means it has been 10 years for Hosted PBX. Ten years, 1000 providers, and only $1.5 Billion in HPBX revenue - that is sad.
In the same vein, ten years means that the VC and PE firms have been sitting on big investments for 10 years without cashing out! That is like wearing a cast on a broken limb, having an inch that you can't scratch, and counting the minutes until the cast comes off.
I wonder when Verizon and its VCE with Google integration will kick in and start taking names. I know it will take time. I mean, it took this RBOC 8 years to hit 50% penetration in just one market - Dallas, according to Fierce. BTW, 50% penetration is what it needed to be financially successful, according to the VZ CFO.
The Hosted PBX space has a couple of big problems: the big guys - VZ, Comcast, Cox, Bright House - are now in the game. They have a brand advantage and deep pockets. I am already hearing about many deals that are going to brands, including to EarthLink over an independent or stand-alone VoIP company.
I see more deals happening soon.
