Bitbuzz revenues break €1m mark

Irish-owned wifi company Bitbuzz has seen revenues break the €1m mark in the first half of the year, on the back of strong growth in the last 12 months.

The wifi network operator grew revenues by 11% year-on-year to more than €1.1m — up from €980,000 in the same period last year.

Bitbuzz managing director Shane Deasy attributed much of the company’s continued success to increased demand from customers in retail outlets and a new simplified login process which is encouraging more logins.

“We are extremely pleased with the growth we are experiencing in 2014 so far. We are starting to see the results of our hard work in the UK, as we now supply the same number of hotels in the United Kingdom as we do in Ireland.

“In Ireland, we are continuing to see the knock on effect of increased appetite for wifi among consumers, with a marked increase in business with Costa Coffee, Spar and Applegreen and Insomnia.

“We attribute the continued growth of daily logins to the simplified login process we introduced early this year, which has proved extremely popular with users as the number of smartphones and tablet computers in the country continues to grow,” said Mr Deasy.

Subscriptions to the service have also continued to increase in the past year with a 50% year-on-year increase in the number of registered users of the service, bringing the total to almost three million.

Bitbuzz, which is headquartered in Dublin and also offices in Belfast and London, has enjoyed success in its partnerships with hotels — including Muckross Park Hotel & Spa and Radisson Blu Sligo — to which they sell bandwidth services to meet guests’ demand for video streaming.

Bitbuzz Freedom has also proven a lucrative expansion to the business with over 18,000 users in Dublin and Cork during the past month.

The service, which provides free on-street wifi, has also been rolled out in Killarney and, last month, in Tralee in advance of the Rose of Tralee Festival.

The company now has more than 520 wifi hotspots and 12,500 hotel bedrooms on its network in Ireland and the UK.

Last year the company enjoyed its best year to date with an 81% increase in registered users during 2013.