Easynet

Easynet was founded on 1 August 1994 by David Rowe and Keith Teare, with its office at 39 Whitfield Street, London. This was located above what would later become the UK's first internet café, Cyberia, with Easynet supplying Cyberia's internet access.

In March 1996 Easynet floated on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) at 100 pence per share, thereby raising £2.6 million. In July 1996 Easynet acquired Pavilion, a small ISP with 1,600 subscribers, for £215,000. However, by September 1996 and just six months after the float, the share price had fallen to 38.5 pence. This was attributed at the time to bad press, general deterioration in the technology market, and increased losses.

On 23 January 2001 Easynet became the first operator in mainland UK to unbundle a local loop of copper wire from British Telecom's network and provide its own broadband service over it. Later in 2004, Easynet was the first to challenge British Telecom in the wholesale broadband market when it announced its 8 Mbit/s LLUStream service.

In June 2001 Easynet acquired Ipsaris from Marconi Communications in an all-share deal worth £300 million. Ipsaris was a network provider owning one of the largest backbones in the UK at the time, using 3,500 kilometres of optical fibre running alongside the UK canal network which had been laid by the Fibreway company in the 1990s. The deal resulted in Marconi owning a 72% stake in Easynet. However, by March 2002 demand for space on the Easynet network had slumped and Easynet effectively mothballed the Ipsaris fibre optic network. The value of the entire network was written down from £350 million to £15 million, and 90 staff members were axed in an effort to reduce costs.

In July 2003 Marconi sold 32% of its stake in Easynet for £40.5 million and in September 2003 it sold its remaining 40% stake for £56.7 million, in an effort to pay off debt and increase the liquidity in Easynet shares.

On 16 March 2004 Easynet acquired Novaxess Beheer B.V., a Dutch broadband company that had at the time unbundled 84 exchanges across the Netherlands and supplied 4,500 business customers. The deal was worth £26.2 million and was partly financed by a vendor placing of 6.35 million new shares in Easynet at a minimum price of 130 pence per share.

On 31 December 2005 the Office of Fair Trading regulator cleared the acquisition of Easynet by British Sky Broadcasting despite concerns raised by rivals. Easynet was purchased and owned by British Sky Broadcasting, from 2006 to 2010. Under Sky, much of the original innovation was lost, but the brand continued. In 2010 BSkyB sold the Easynet brands and customer base to Lloyds Development Capital (LDC), the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group.

In 2013 LDC sold its stake in Easynet to MDNX, backed by private equity firm Equistone Partners Europe who took a majority stake in the newly formed group. This new group would continue to trade under the Easynet brand.