Epsilon Telecommunications has been listed in the Real Business ‘Hot 100’, ranking its performance amongst the highest performers in the UK.

The fallout from the 1991 recession meant that the telecoms wholesale market was a lot less crowded for new entrants. Andreas Hipp seized the moment to set up Epsilon Telecommunications: “We could also buy equipment from administrators at ten per cent of the original value, which made the business plan work,” he says. Hipp, with two co-founders and a bag of private equity cash, has built Epsilon into a major player in the global voice connectivity sector, with a customer base of 250 telecoms operators. His aim is to get as many international telcos onto the network as possible. “Then size and scale come into play. It works like a club. People join our network as we have a better reach.” And once on, they don’t come off. “Our churn rate is nearly zero, we don’t even measure it,” says Hipp. Turnover last year was £5.8m, and Hipp anticipates this will rise to £10m within two years. “With customers coming from emerging markets, there is still a long way to go.” Compound annual growth is 50.7 per cent.