60-second interview
Tom O’Hagan, Managing Director of Virtual1
What’s the most exciting aspect of working in the UK’s ICT sector?
It’s an industry that constantly changes. The UK telecoms market is the most competitive in Europe, and one of the most competitive in the world. There’s a lot of different companies in the market always coming up with new ideas, which means if you want to succeed you have to innovate too. There’s an entrepreneurial element to the UK’s telecoms market, which makes it exciting to work in.
If you were Prime Minister for a day, what would you do to help businesses?
The main thing I’d do is to further reduce Capital Gains Tax. The last Government was getting that right by reducing it down to 10%. And you need that to get new ideas and new energy into the market. It’s a fact that the lower taxes are, the more tax revenues rise.
Which business idea do you wish you’d thought of first?
That would have to be something like the iPhone, which has had such a huge impact on the market for mobile services. At the moment you’ve got companies like Apple and Google driving up the capacity needed on networks. The revenue model for these networks needs to change. At the moment, they’re not able to recoup the cost of carrying all this traffic.
Which five words best describe what you look for in a provider of connectivity solutions?
Service, price, support, reliability, responsiveness.
About virtual 1
Virtual1 is a virtual network operator (VNO). The company owns no network of its own, and instead delivers services to 230 countries across the globe via relationships with a number of network operator and ISP partners. This business model enables Virtual1 to take a flexible approach to solutions, and build networks that truly meet the customer’s needs.
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We're wholesale connectivity aggregator, bringing together everything a customer needs under one SLA,” says Managing Director Tom O’Hagan. “The most important thing about us is that we don’t sell direct to end-user organisations. We work through resellers of various kinds, other telecoms service providers, ASPs, all our products sold on a white label basis and fully geared for the channel.”
