Ting Mobile, the young and disruptive no-contract Sprint MVNO,
announced Tuesday that it will be moving into the world of ISPs with the acquisition of Blue Ridge InternetWorks (BRI), a small internet provider in Charlottesville, Virginia. The purchase of the 70% majority stocks was announced at around 4 p.m. on Tuesday. The purchase price and terms are currently confidential.
According to Tuscows CEO Elliot Noss, this is really just the beginning of Ting’s ambitions, and a Ting TV service was hinted at several times during the conference call discussing the acquisition of BRI. The CEO also talked a lot about Ting’s plans to continue to expand their presence as an ISP by partnering with cities and towns, entrepreneurs and completing more acquisitions to bring fiber networks to as many places as possible.
However, as far as this most recent venture into internet goes,
Ting Internet said that it intends to offer ultra-speed symmetrical GB access (1 GB up/1 GB down) and that there will be multiple tiers of service, one which will be under $100 and the other significantly cheaper and slightly slower. Complete details about pricing and services are not available right now as the acquisition won’t actually be formalized until the first quarter of 2-15. Media spokesperson Jesse Simms did tell me that the services will likely be very similar to what BRI currently offers. You can take a peek at their prices here. Simms was unsure whether the service will also be no-contract, and Noss also did not clarify. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
BRI currently has around 3,000 customers, 1,000 of which are solely using their internet services. Noss said that Ting wants to expand the residential side of the business. Currently, the service will only be in Charlottesville, but the requests to expand to other communities are flowing in, and Ting has advertised that it is listening and looking to move elsewhere in the next couple of years. In contrast to their current mobile business, Ting Internet will not only be a reseller of internet services, but intends to actually build some of their own fiber internet network. We’ll just have to wait and see how all of this goes, but I certainly have high hopes.]]>
