Vocus focus on core network upgrade

Although he declined to reveal exact details of the upgrade, CEO James Spenceley said that Vocus is "finalising equipment purchases with Cisco" this week.

He said expansion of its wholesale network to date had been "step-by-step".

"We tend to grow with customer demand and grow very carefully," Spenceley said.

The upgrade will be handled completely by Vocus' internal staff.

The wholesaler has recently brought on four systems and network engineers, both to continue to service its existing customer base and to prepare for the continued growth it is seeing in the wholesale space.

"We've grown from almost no customers to 80 in the space of a year," Spenceley said.

"The wholesale industry is alive and strong. It seems a lot of growth is coming from hosting customers [although] we've had success in both the hosting and ISP markets."

The company's growth appears to have caught even Spenceley off-guard. He puts Vocus' expansion down to a combination of price and direct line access to engineering support staff.

"We specified our billing system to have 70 customers at most and lo and behold we've got 80 in the first year," he said.

The company has also outgrown its office space in North Sydney.

Vocus has been cashflow positive for six months. Three-quarters of its customer base is Australian, although New Zealand is taking off, Spenceley added.