Our History

2001 – An idea comes to life

Gamma’s story began in December 2001 when Phil Corbishley and Paul Banner – after years working together – completed the deal to create Gamma Telecom from the remnants of Atlantic Telecom. The first chapter focused on building a brand new national network: 2,500km of fibre supported by switching centres in London, Manchester and Glasgow.

2002 – Traffic! (The good kind)

Within its first year, Gamma added a second London switch and became one of the first providers to offer wholesale line rental. Easter 2002 marked the moment Gamma carried its very first traffic as “Gamma”.

2003-2004 – Bob, Telia and Uniworld join Gamma

Growth gathered pace. Bob Falconer joined Gamma in March 2003, a small but established company with 35 staff.

In 2003, Gamma took over the UK channel partner agreements of Swedish carrier Telia, adding around 100 switchless channel partners.

Acquisition was on the agenda in 2004 when Uniworld Communications joined the Group, along with five smaller businesses that were later consolidated under the Uniworld umbrella.

2006 – Communications with a conscience

Gamma declared its green credentials in 2006, becoming the UK’s first carbon-neutral carrier and giving its channel partners a unique differentiator in the marketplace. Gamma has remained Carbon Neutral® certified since then and has pledged to reach Net Zero by 2042.

2007 – New product development

This year saw the launch of the Inbound call management solution, giving even small businesses call centre style features. It was complemented by flexible Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery capabilities designed to help customers never miss a call.

2008 – Creating opportunities

Gamma formed a new business unit focused on the increasing number of enterprise and public sector customers. The year ended with Gamma signing its first MVNO agreement with mobile operator Three UK.

2010 – The big one billion

Gamma upgraded its network using Ericsson’s cutting-edge TSS4 soft switch. The timing was perfect: network voice minutes comfortably passed one billion per month (setting a record), and business customer connections exceeded 150,000.

2011 – A new Horizon

Gamma launched Horizon, its third generation hosted communications platform, bringing converged fixed and mobile telephony within reach for businesses of all sizes. Today, Horizon remains an award winning business communications solution across the UK.

2012 – Investment into direct enterprise sales

The acquisition of Varidion Limited, a wide-area network specialist and systems integrator, gave Gamma a more established route to large enterprise and public sector sales, and enabled it to win larger, more complex deals.

2013 – Reaching the top

Gamma became the UK’s number one SIP provider, as confirmed by industry research from Ovum.

2014 – Hello stock market

Gamma made a major step by floating on the AIM stock market.

2017 – Need for speed

Looking to the future, Gamma made a major investment in its national network to meet the growing demand for speeds up to 10Gbit/s from larger enterprises and the public sector. As part of this investment, we also took the opportunity to replace the fibre on our national network with a new arrangement with CityFibre which runs to 2042.

2018 – Welcomes and goodbyes, and European expansion

After 15 years at Gamma, CEO Bob Falconer retired from the Board of Directors and was replaced by Andrew Taylor as Gamma’s new CEO.

Gamma acquired DX Groep BV ‘Dean One’, a telecoms group in the Netherlands, to act as a focal point through to broaden our geographic footprint and take products which have been successful in the UK into new markets.

Gamma also acquired Nimsys and Schiphol Connect. Nimsys is an IT specialist for workspaces, installing and managing IP networks for companies and business centres and provides broadband, VoIP and other ICT services to multi-tenancy buildings.

Schiphol Connect is the telecom and internet provider at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, providing voice and broadband services to companies with an office in or around Schiphol.

2019 – Entering the Unified Communications (‘UC’) space

Gamma launched Horizon Collaborate, extending the award-winning Horizon platform into a fully unified communications experience.

2020 – Rebrand and further European expansion

Gamma revealed a new brand and identity, designed to reflect a fast-growing company that puts its people and customers front and centre, and aimed to establish Gamma as the go-to premium choice for all business communications.

2021 – Unified Communications as a Service (‘UCaaS’) and product launches

Gamma acquired Mission Labs, a well-established UCaaS technology business which has built a reputation for creating technologically advanced solutions and delivering great service to its customers and partners. This was a significant step forward in Gamma’s journey to be the leading UCaaS and CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service) provider across key customer segments in the UK and European markets where the business operates.

It also launched several products to enhance its portfolio and meet the growing demands of customers and partners. This included PhoneLine+, a single line phone solution for micro-businesses; Horizon Contact, a CCaaS solution for the SME and Enterprise markets; a new and improved version of Gamma Mobile, the company’s business-only mobile service; as well as SoGEA, a connectivity solution in response to the upcoming PSTN switch off.

In a major market development, Gamma became one of a select group of operators on Microsoft’s Operator Connect Teams programme. This announcement strengthened the long-standing strategic partnership with Microsoft and raised Gamma’s profile in the UK and, in time, Europe.

2022 – New leadership direction

Andrew Belshaw, Chief Financial Officer since the IPO in 2014, was promoted to Deputy Chief Executive, and subsequently to Interim CEO as Andrew Taylor stepped down from his role. Later that year, Belshaw stepped fully into the role of CEO, providing continuity and strategic focus across European markets.

The senior leadership team was further strengthened with the addition of Bill Castell as Chief Financial Officer. Bill joined from OVO Energy and previously worked for Virgin Media and Barclays Bank.

Chris Bradford also joined as Chief People Officer to lead the company’s people and engagement strategy, having previously worked on business transformation and organisation design programmes for Vodafone, Equinix, Aviva Investors and The British Olympic Association.

2023 – Strengthening capabilities and security

Gamma acquired Satisnet, a specialist Managed Security Services Provider, expanding its cyber security capabilities across the UK and Europe. This was also the year Martin Hellawell joined as Chair of the Board, enhancing governance as the company prepared for further expansion.

2024 – Building scale across products and regions

The momentum continued into 2024, a pivotal year for Gamma’s European growth story.

Gamma welcomed Colin Lees as Chief Technology Officer, arriving from Openreach to lead the technology roadmap and platform development as the Group scaled its cloud communications and global services capability.

The Group continued its acquisition strategy:

• To broaden the UK channel partner focused capabilities, Gamma acquired EnableX Group (including Pragma, Techland and Candio). This brought a range of new products and capabilities, and also introduced the iPECS platform into the Gamma portfolio, adding another trusted UCaaS and hybrid voice option for partners and customers.
• Later in the year, the company acquired Coolwave Communications, a provider of international voice and messaging services with a global footprint. This deal significantly expanded Gamma’s ability to deliver voice enablement services in multiple countries and is now integrated into Global Communications Enablement.

By the end of the year, Gamma had also completed the acquisition of Placetel from Cisco, strengthening its footprint in Germany, widening its European UCaaS product set, and establishing Cisco Webex as a core strategic product for the Group. In addition, Gamma acquired BrightCloud, enhancing customer experience and CCaaS capabilities.

2025 – Transformation to a Pan-European Group

By 2025, Gamma’s transformation into a pan-European communications company was unmistakable.

The Group successfully transitioned its equity listing from AIM to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange, a milestone reflecting both size and governance maturity.

On the M&A front, Gamma completed the strategically significant acquisition of STARFACE, a leading German cloud PBX and collaboration software provider, further accelerating its scale in Europe’s largest SME market, and complementing the earlier Placetel acquisition.

Gamma also moved to enhance its enterprise and hardware reach by adding Allnet Solutions, widening its ability to supply and support complex communications infrastructure.

This was also the period when ‘Horizon with Webex’ and ‘Webex for Gamma’ were rolled out, bringing Cisco-powered collaboration deeply into the portfolio and helping partners deliver fully integrated voice, meetings and messaging solutions across Europe.

One of the defining commercial partnerships announced in 2025 was the long-term strategic relationship with O2 Daisy, under which Gamma agreed to support UCaaS capacity and to transition a portion of its UK direct SME base through a long-term wholesale arrangement, a structural shift in how the Group supports customers and partners. Gamma also launched a strategic partnership with Clear Business, providing the communications infrastructure as a managed service behind services delivered to thousands of UK SMEs under the Clear Business brand.

2026 – Global footprint expansion

Gamma continued to push beyond Europe with the launch of calling services into the APAC region, starting with operations in Australia. This marked Gamma’s Service Provider business’s first major foray outside Europe and underlined its ambition to be a truly global enablement and connectivity provider supporting partners and multi-country operations.

Here’s to another 25 years of building relationships and enabling business communications across Europe – and now, across the world.