The Glasgow-based carrier runs a nationwide MPLS network and targets customers from prosumer through to small corporates, according to product director Nigel Stevens. The upper limit of its target market is imposed by the fact that it is UK-specific and so doesn’t pursue multinational organizations with global WAN requirements.
The operator segments the market it goes after into prosumer and SoHo, which it serves through its Demon ISP business, and SME and corporate, which are typical Thus customers. Demon tends to serve companies with broadband DSL, whereas Thus offers traditional leased line and Ethernet services.
The mobile angle is a result of Thus’s February acquisition of Your Communications Plc, Stevens said. Your was an alternative carrier of fixed-line voice and data services for business customers and the public sector, predominantly in the northwest of England, so the main thrust of the acquisition was increased footprint, he acknowledged.
The fact that it was also Vodafone Group Plc’s largest reseller in the business market was icing on the cake, in fact, and now Stevens says he plans to roll out a BlackBerry service, initially for his Demon customers to see how well it fares, after which he will look at extending it to the Thus customer base.
The rationale here is clearly not to compete across the board with the UK’s five mobile operators. Instead, it is to offer a bundle of services such as broadband, leased line and hosted Exchange (which the carrier doesn’t currently do), with the possibility of mobilizing the email part through a hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
Most of Demon’s customers are POP3 users, but what if they want to go for Exchange without the cost of an email server of their own? he said. We’ll offer them hosted Exchange, plus a BES behind it for push to mobile devices.
Of course, Microsoft itself might be interested in providing that same push Exchange capability to Thus, now that Windows Mobile 5.0 handsets can offer that same functionality, and indeed Vodafone itself offers an all-Microsoft alternative to BlackBerry services and its own push email based on technology from Visto.
However, Stevens said he had yet to be convinced or excited by Windows Mobile 5.0. He added that Thus actually launched Demon’s broadband service bundled with a WM 5.0-based handset from HTC, but the response was underwhelming and the phone part of the offering was withdrawn.
