TELECOMS GROUP Imagine has acquired wireless broadband provider Irish Broadband in a €47 million deal.

As part of the acquisition NTR and Kilsaran Concrete - Irish Broadband's major shareholders - will take a 25 per cent stake in Imagine and are investing €7 million into the business. The deal values Imagine at €187 million and the group will have annual revenues of over €100 million.

Imagine founder and chairman Seán Bolger said that, excluding mobile operators, the expanded Imagine would be the second largest telecoms provider in Ireland behind Eircom. It will have 15,000 business customers, 80,000 broadband customers and 115,000 residential phone customers.

NTR and Kilsaran had been reported to be looking for a buyer for Irish Broadband for some time. A number of other operators ran the rule over the company, including Digiweb and Clearwire, but they balked at a reported asking price of €20-€25 million.

The €47 million value on this deal is understood to include the writing off of debts by NTR and Kilsaran. Mr Bolger confirmed that Imagine was acquiring Irish Broadband debt-free.

Potential buyers were also concerned that Irish Broadband's network would need a significant investment to upgrade it to the latest WiMax technology which can support voice, video and next generation services.

Mr Bolger said the majority of the network is WiMax capable and only requires a simple upgrade. He said Imagine had decided to take a strategic position in WiMax because major players such as Intel and Time Warner are backing it. All laptop computers shipped with Intel chips from the second half of the year will have the capability to access WiMax networks.

Irish Broadband had incurred heavy losses as it rolled out its wireless network. In the year to the end of March 2007, the most recent for which accounts are available, it had a pretax loss of €22.5 million. In April 2007 NTR and Kilsaran backed the firm with €25 million in loans, which was on top of €32.5 million they provided as interest-free convertible loans in December 2005.

There has been a round of consolidation happening in the Irish telecommunications sector. Vodafone purchased fixed line operator Perlico last year for a price of up to €80 million while rival O2 was linked with a bid for Smart Telecom.