Vocatel was established in 2007 and has built up a customer base of business customers with telephone landline connections and data lines. Its headquarters are in Wuppertal, near Dusseldorf, and company director Floris Boekel will act in an advisory capacity during the changeover period.
Firstcom Europe said it is following a strategy of growth through acquisition that has increased its revenue from £2.5m in 2013 to £31.2m in 2020. The company focuses on promoting cloud based unified communication products to customers that use more traditional technology.
Christian Bleakley, CEO of Firstcom Europe (pictured above), explained, “This is a perfect match for our company. Vocatel brings a sound base of business customers and has a reputation for prompt and personalised customer service. We look forward to working hard to transition the Vocatel customer base to the latest cloud technology with unified communications products. This move will allow customers to seamlessly use voice, video fax, SMS, and team collaboration, on the one product.
“In revenue terms Germany is our second largest country operation after the UK. Germany has historically not been an early adopter of cloud technologies; however, we have noticed that the landscape is rapidly changing, and we are delighted to have a foothold not too far from Dusseldorf and Essen”.
In August 2020 Firstcom Europe raised £24.8m from Kartesia for a senior loan facility to refinance its existing debt arrangements and support its ongoing buy and build strategy.