Lake in £15m deal to supply telecom systems

Lake Communications, the Dublin-based communications systems company, has announced a £15 million (€19 million) three-year deal to supply business communications systems to Australian telecommunications company, PlesTel. It represents a diversification strategy by Lake into a new market with new technology.

The deal is a boost for Lake which has seen initial dramatic growth in the mid-1990s slow up more recently. Lake, which employs 160 people, recorded a turnover of £35 million in its last financial year. The announcement coincides with the opening of Lake's Melbourne sales office, which will now leverage the deal with PlesTel to target 540,000 small and medium-sized Australian businesses. PlesTel is 70 per cent owned by Plessey Asia Pacific and 30 per cent by Telstra, employing more than 700 staff throughout Australia.

Lake Communications has long been tipped as a potential candidate for a stock market listing, but following its acquisition of Topology Systems for £5.6 million in 1998, the company has invested heavily in research and development.

"Our products have developed significantly from our traditional PBX range to a new data and voice product set which will be launched at CeBIT, Hanover this year," according to Lake managing director Mr Anthony Bermingham. "This is a key milestone in our evolution towards Internet Protocol (IP) and Voice over IP products."

Lake has developed a hybrid telephone system, marketed as Commander Vision in Australia, which has already enjoyed success in Europe. The technology provides small and medium sized businesses with high-speed voice and data connections.

Lake is banking on rapid growth in the market for small office-home office (SOHO) systems in the next two to three years, as increasingly companies must become e-commerce enabled. Commander Vision can be configured as an analogue system to plug in directly to standard telephone lines or it can operate as an ISDN system. It allows users to control voice mail, answering services and other phone features from a personal computer.