US entrepreneur to pay €7m for Leap

A US entrepreneur is paying about €7 million to buy Leap Broadband, the telecoms company founded by the Ardagh brothers, Rory and Charlie.

Ken Peterson, founder and chief executive of Columbia Ventures, plans to merge it with some of his other Irish assets to build a national firm supplying a mix of services.

Mr Peterson already owns Magnet Networks, which supplies cable television, broadband and telephony to homes in some areas in Dublin. He also owns Hibernia Atlantic, a transatlantic cable linking the Republic with the US and Britain.

"I think Hibernia is more of a separate business unit but I do think that Magnet and Leap are a good complement," he told The Irish Times in an interview yesterday. "Leap is a firm that is already up and running, has customers, is making money and has a good management team."

Mr Peterson owns a broad range of telecoms assets in the US, Australia and Ireland. He has also amassed a 10 per cent stake in Scottish telecoms firm Thus.

Rory and Charlie Ardagh, sons of Fianna Fáil TD Seán Ardagh, founded Leap in 2001 following the collapse of a previous joint venture with Formus Communications.

Formus was a US wireless operator that expanded rapidly across Europe and then ran out of cash in 2001 as the dotcom bubble burst. The Ardagh brothers owned a large amount of shares in the firm, which ended up being worthless.

Shortly after the collapse of Formus, the Ardagh brothers founded European Access Providers, which they branded Leap Broadband. It supplies broadband services using wireless technology and has recently begun to unbundle the local loop by placing its own equipment in Eircom exchanges to provide broadband via DSL technology.

Rory Ardagh, who is widely regarded as the technical brains behind Leap, said the firm would now move forward to provide a triple play of television, broadband and telephony services to customers. He said the previous disappointment with Formus and the process of building a new firm had provided great management learning and experience for him.

Charlie Ardagh, who is also a Fianna Fáil councillor, said the deal would enable Leap to provide new technologies.