Pilgrims Progress

Cable and Wireless have set out on a seldom trod path, turning down unprofitable business and losing un-economic customers as a route to higher profit. As widely reported in the papers, the boss has gone so far as to offer the biggest "non-city broker" bonus scheme ever seen to the new management team. £220m ($390m) is a big bonus, and as you can imagine they have some serious numbers to hit.

CW is the number 3 UK Business ISP, and currently the top hosting provider to the London FTSE. Their published plans are to become the Armani of Telecoms, serving the top 3,000 companies with profitable and high value services.

As well as being able to see who is connected to the IP service providers, one of the things BackChannel is good at is tracking change, so over next year we will post up what we can on CWs performance, analyse the customers leaving & staying, and see if the team are on track for a monster payout.

Good luck chasing that bonus guys, this should be interesting.

Verizon market share slipping as BT and C&W close gap

After more than 10 years as the UK's No.1 provider of Internet services to big business, Verizon is close to slipping behind BT for the first time.

In 1997 Verizon predecessor UUNet/PIPEX share of the UK business market was at 45%. As WorldCom then MCI, Verizon has seen a sequential drop in market share, a trend that continued over the last 12 months. BackChannels current analysis predict BT will move into the No.1 slot within the next few weeks.

But it is not all gloom for Verizon - BackChannels figures reveal the fact that Verizon acquires customers faster than BT. If Verizon can reduce their higher than average churn, their ability to acquire customers will quickly arrest this slide. It will be interesting to see if the new Verizon team are ready to fight back.

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