Speaking at Giacom’s Connect Live event in London today, Sam Johnson, Indirect Channel Partner Manager at BT EE, said the move reflects changing customer buying behaviour and a recognition that the indirect channel is now critical to future growth.

“For a long time, EE perhaps didn’t see this, and we weren’t present within the wholesale channel. We saw the best route to scale and to end customers as direct,” Johnson told delegates. “However, from today, all that changes.”

Johnson said business customers no longer want to buy connectivity “in isolation”, but instead in the context of their wider business needs, pain points and desired outcomes.

“They want it to be secure, fast and reliable and tailored to them – and that’s where you come in,” he said. “Partners like you are the closest to the customer. You understand all of their trials and tribulations better than the network can.”

He added that the channel should be seen as a “hidden superpower” and acknowledged that EE’s historic absence from wholesale had been “a bit of a glaring omission”.

The partnership with Giacom, is intended to give EE a route to scale rapidly through indirect sales.

“Once EE made the business decision to enter the wholesale channel market, the objective was growth and scale, and that’s where Giacom stands out,” Johnson said. “They’re the most established name in the business mobile channel space, with one of the largest UK bases around.”

Johnson said the agreement was “partner-led” from the outset and required “some difficult conversations internally” at BT EE about how the operator needed to change its approach to make the model work for resellers.

He credited both Giacom and the EE team for collaborating on a model designed to be easier for partners to sell at scale.

“In days gone by, when EE’s been in the marketplace, it’s been seen as quite clunky,” Johnson said. “Our goal is to address that and create something that is seamless, automated and can be sold at scale to partners alike.”

Automation, simplicity and scalability will sit at the heart of the new wholesale proposition, with EE aiming not just to match rival networks but to “go beyond” them.\

“We shouldn’t just be looking at how we can operate on a level playing field,” Johnson said. “We want to be a best-in-class solution and ultimately make up for lost time.”

He said Giacom had played a key role as a “trusted technology partner” in shaping the agreement and helping EE tackle the operational challenges involved in building a scalable wholesale platform.

Looking ahead, Johnson positioned the move as a way for EE to claw back market share from rival networks and grow its presence in the business mobile space.

“From EE’s perspective, we’ve probably got 60% of market share to go after with the other networks,” he said. “We’re here to bring the best network, best-in-class automation, with a best-in-class sales function in Giacom and really drive scale and volume with the EE network.”

He added: “If we don’t, those connections are going to continue to go to the other networks and they’re going to grow and we’re going to stay behind. That’s why this partnership was so important to drive forward.”

 She has almost 30 years’ experience in direct and indirect sales.

Chapman-Smith will report to Giacom MD Mobile Andrew Wilford,

At Giacom, she will oversee the company’s mobile sales strategy across network-billed, wholesale, and hardware channels. She will lead the mobile sales team and work with UK partners to grow mobile services.

Her appointment comes as Giacom expands its mobile portfolio. Current developments include the planned onboarding of EE via BT Wholesale, a new IoT solution for the Fixed Wireless Access market, and a tiered wholesale mobile model for managed service providers.

]]> https://mobilenewscwp.co.uk/news/article/three-business-head-channel-management-new-giacom-mobile-director-sales/feed/ 0 https://mobilenewscwp.co.uk/news/article/giacom-sell-grade-used-devices-channel-partners-igo-life-partnership/ https://mobilenewscwp.co.uk/news/article/giacom-sell-grade-used-devices-channel-partners-igo-life-partnership/#respond Tue, 18 Mar 2025 11:50:51 +0000 https://mncwp.tailrd.cloud/giacom-sell-grade-used-devices-channel-partners-igo-life-partnership/ Unified communications provider Giacom is entering the secondary market in collaboration with iGo Life which supplies as-new smartphones to businesses., Through iGo Life, Giacom will offer its partners a premium range of Grade A refurbished smartphones available from the Giacom Cloud Marketplace. This platform connects suppliers and resellers, enabling them to purchase, process, and transact

Unified communications provider Giacom is entering the secondary market in collaboration with iGo Life which supplies as-new smartphones to businesses.,

Through iGo Life, Giacom will offer its partners a premium range of Grade A refurbished smartphones available from the Giacom Cloud Marketplace. This platform connects suppliers and resellers, enabling them to purchase, process, and transact products and services through a single portal.

Giacom promises that ReNew devices will look and perform like new. Each device is backed by a 12-month warranty at prices up to a third lower than brand-new equivalents.

“ReNew is a commitment to partner success and environmental responsibility, said Giacom managing director for mobile Andrew Wilford said:

*“With ReNew, we’re helping partners offer affordable, high-quality devices while supporting global sustainability goals. As SMBs increasingly prioritise environmental impact in their technology decisions, this presents a key opportunity for resellers.”*

iGo Life managing director,William Buxton (bellow) added “Partnering with Giacom on ReNew empowers businesses to deliver high-quality refurbished devices that align with environmental goals and customer expectations.”

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Scottish-based HighNet is now part of Focus Group. Giacom is the new unified comms group formed last month by combining Digital Wholesale Solutions (DWS) and Union Street which supply comms, cloud, hardware and billing services

Miller reports to Giacom’s sales director for mobile, David Edwards and will be working with Giacom’s team to build relationships with prospective clients, demonstrating the company’s mobile products and value-added service offerings.

“We are delighted to welcome Tony to the Giacom Team. He joins us at a very exciting time as we embark on ambitious plans for business development across Scotland and Northern Ireland” said Giacom managing director for Mobile, Andrew Wilford.

Miller added: “It’s a great pleasure to join the team at Giacom. The company has an excellent reputation for delivering first-class solutions for the channel, with a mobile offering and service wrap that’s second to none”

Giacom was last week relaunched as the new single brand for what used to be te Digital Wholesale Solutions, Giacom and Union Street technologies brands (see story HERE)

CityFibre is an alt-net supplier and will enable Giacom to offer its partners the chance to sell full fibre in areas outside of the Openreach network and give them more choice when selecting replacement services in the lead up to the Nationwide Stop Sell of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR), and the PSTN Switch Off and the end of 2025.

CityFibre is Giacom’s first alt-net supplier for full fibre broadband. The two companies already have a commercial relationship, with Giacom having offered CityFibre Ethernet since 2018.  CityFibures full figure offers synchronous upload and download speeds of up to 1Gbps.

“CityFibre FTTP offers symmetrical bandwidth, making it truly unique within our portfolio and a valuable addition to our product range. This service will help our partners o differentiate themselves in the market.” said Giacom CEO Terry O’Brien.

City Fibre Business Sales Director Andrew Wilson added; “Our footprint gives Giacom’s partners the ability to offer full fibre broadband services to businesses for the first time and as our build continues to scale, that opportunity keeps growing’

Last week, City Fibre announced Suffolk and Norfolk will become the next recipients of high-speed broadband. Funding for the project is being split between City Fibre and the government, and with the government promising 5bn total to reach rural communities across the nation, unfettered private-public collaboration like this is set to seriously level-up connectivity across Britain.

“The launch of Cloud Market seemed an appropriate time to bring our three organisations together under one brand”

Digital Wholesale Solutions (DWS) and Union Street brands have been harmonised under the ‘Giacom’ brand and the group’s four ordering portals have been unified into a single portal called Cloud Market.

The Cloud Market portal promises improvements in navigating the user interface, performance boosts and most importantly, the ability to order all products and services from one place.

DWS acquired Giacom and Union Street in 2020 to become a single source supplier of comms, cloud, hardware, and billing services. Giacom provides cloud services to UK businesses through its network of more than 5,000 technology partners.

Prior to its acquisition, Giacom was set up in 1999 as an IT service provider to support small and medium sized businesses across the UK. It has worked with top vendors across the world such as Microsoft, Acronis, Bitdefender and Apple. Combined, the company is now a £320 million organisation that made a headline profit of £63.3 million in the previous financial year. It’s mobile revenues soared 22.7 per cent to £101.6 million the year to March 2022.

“Our £10bn addressable market in the UK is huge and our mission is for every penny of this to be spent with our partners. Cloud Market is our first step in realising this vision, bringing our partners easy access to a single source for quoting, provisioning, servicing, billing, training and enablement” said DWS CEO Terry O’Brien

“The launch of Cloud Market seemed an appropriate time to bring our three organisations together under one brand. This has always been our ambition, but we wanted to do it at a meaningful point in the development of our organisation as one business. We considered launching a new brand, however realised that in Giacom and Cloud Market, we already had recognised and trusted cloud brands that many of our partners already knew and that could take our business forward into the increasingly cloud-first future of the IT and Telecoms market.”