The agreements further strengthen ATC’s breadth of capabilities in the UK distribution channel and are consistent with the Group’s strategy to build a volume market for Internet Protocol (IP) based communications solutions through ATC’s channels to market. The addition of these vendors significantly broadens ATC’s IP-based communications portfolio, in line with the Group’s objective of making ATC a single source for next generation communications solutions.
The agreement with COLT extends the existing dealer channel relationship with ATC to a distributor relationship. It is COLT’s first distributor relationship in the UK. ATC will provide the full range of COLT Voice services, Wholesale Line Rental, Intelligent Networking and COLT’s first convergence offering, COLT Total.
The agreement with Mitel is for the distribution of the full range of Mitel’s 3300 IP platforms in addition to the 3600 hosted platform. ATC’s Rocom division will continue to be master distributor for the SiNET hosted telephony system, which is based upon the Mitel 3600 platform. ATC will now be able to offer to channel customers both types of Mitel IP telephony – customer premise equipment and hosted – making it the first in Europe to have this dual capability.
Alex Tupman, ATC Group Chief Executive commented:
“We are delighted that the synergies of the Rocom acquisition are already becoming visible with the extension of our relationship with Mitel and COLT to our Rocom distribution division.
“These new agreements position ATC as the leading UK distributor in the UK for next generation communications solutions from a single source. ATC’s widening vendor portfolio, combined with the wider Group service capabilities, will strengthen our offering as a genuine value-added service provider and distributor.”
“These agreements provide us with a significant opportunity to extend our market share in the rapidly growing small enterprise sector. There are approximately 3.5 million companies with less than 100 telephone users which still need to move to IP telephony.”*