Commsworld’s Ricky Nicol admits he sometimes has to pinch himself as he tries to take stock of what has been a whirlwind few years for his business.
The CEO of Scotland’s largest telecommunications network provider has every reason to feel a degree of disbelief in what the company has achieved. Since 2012, Commsworld has managed to build its very own directly managed business-only Next Generation Network, Fluency, spanning the length and breadth of the UK.
In addition, Nicol has steered the company in delivering an enormous fibre network across Edinburgh, under budget and in less than half the time the project was predicted to take. That has been accompanied by the company’s first intercity Dark Fibre span between Edinburgh and Glasgow, with other large metro networks built in Glasgow and Aberdeen.
Nicol is not a man to rest on his laurels, however, or be tempted to put his feet up and bask in success. When asked what his greatest achievement has been, he answers: “My family – and beating cancer.”
That experience has given Nicol a perspective on what accomplishments in business mean, but have done nothing to dampen his ambition. If the past four-and-a-half years have brought success Nicol and his team dared not dream about, it has only sharpened their appetite for more.
Commsworld has already embarked on projects to turn Edinburgh and Aberdeen into Gigabit Cities, putting them on a par with leading digital hubs such as Stockholm, Seoul and Kansas City. In Edinburgh, the company has shaped the route of a new 150km, ultra fast Pure Fibre network capable of delivering multi gigabit internet connections to tens of thousands of businesses.
Similarly, in partnership with CityFibre; installation of the Aberdeen CORE Pure Fibre network is nearing completion and the Glasgow CORE is well underway, with Commsworld an official provider to potentially tens of thousands of organisations.
Nicol’s ambitions are not just restricted to serving the needs of business in major urban centres, however. His next strategic play is to “make a big move into the public sector market in Scotland.”
Having just delivered the WAN project for the Canadian firm CGI Group as part of their £400 million IT outsource for City of Edinburgh Council, Commsworld has already secured a contract with Scottish Borders Council to revamp the region’s internet connectivity with networks up to 10Gb/s. The project will ensure that every school in the Scottish Borders enjoys the same internet connection speeds as those in Edinburgh.
While the public sector will benefit greatly from the revamped network, the benefits will also be extended to the local business community via partnerships already signed with regional ISPs.
Although Nicol acknowledges that the core of Commsworld’s recent success has been in Networks and specifically WAN, the company also has a strong UC, telephony and cloud services division based around integrated software platforms and, as Nicol points out, a strong focus on customer service.
“[Customer service] is the number one priority,” he says, “which is why we spend most of our investment and focus on it.”
And behind a commitment to great service is an equal commitment to people in the business.
“It is imperative, we are a people business first and foremost. When we hire, we are looking for character, a winning attitude and good social and communication skills. In return, we treat them well and, importantly, as equals.”
Being equal and fair are clearly values Nicol holds dear. He is driven by a belief that fast, reliable broadband connections should be available to everybody regardless of where they are, and views Commsworld’s work firmly in the context of reinvigorating business opportunities throughout the whole of Scotland.
Writing on his own blog on the Commsworld website, he said: “We firmly believe Super-Fast Broadband has to be delivered universally, whether that be rural areas previously seen as unattractive to investors or indeed to help address ‘social digital exclusion’ – a political buzzword for some, but a genuine inequality that exists and we see every day.”
And to those sceptics who point out the hurdles of building a Telecommunications business of scale in the 21st Century, Nicol, who has overcome far greater odds in his life, has a simple answer.
“I think back to the number of occasions industry experts and consultants told me I had a great idea, adventurous and exciting, however… ‘it can’t be done.’
“Well it can, and indeed it has been done, way beyond what was first planned and I may add this is only the tip of the iceberg as we move forward.”
