iWay continues to grow - positive Corona impact
Swiss Internet service provider iWay increases sales and brings ultra-fast Internet at 10 Gbit/s. Growth continues in 2020 and the infrastructure is systematically expanded.
The Internet service provider (ISP) iWay was also able to grow last year. The company increased its sales in fiscal year 2019 by 12 percent year-on-year to CHF 29.2 million from CHF 26.1 million. In its most important business segment, Internet Access, revenues grew by 6 percent from 15.8 to 16.7 million Swiss francs. iWay also continued to gain market share in Internet telephony. Sales of VoIP (Voice over IP) services, for example, amounted to CHF 7.2 million, representing growth of 25 percent. The partners again made a significant contribution to the success of the full-service provider in 2019. Thanks to them, the share of indirect sales increased from 54 to 56 percent of total sales. The continued strong performance is also reflected in the creation of new jobs, as the workforce grew from 44 to 48 employees in 2019. For the current year, iWay expects a further increase in sales of around 10 percent. New positions are also to be created again in 2020, particularly in the marketing and support areas. At the same time as the results of the past financial year, iWay announced its brand-new, ultra-fast offering available throughout Switzerland with up to 10 gigabits per second at its media orientation, which was held by video conference for the first time as a result of the Corona crisis.
iWay hardly feels any negative effects from Corona
Managing Director Matthias Oswald is also confident for the current business year. A negative Corona impact is not noticeable, he explained at the media conference. On the contrary, he said, several new orders and requests for higher bandwidths were directly attributable to the corona-induced trend toward home office work. Some customers may have noticed that mobile networks are reaching their limits and that LAN connections via fiber optic connections are therefore running more stably, according to one assumption. What could be noticed in the past few days was increased bandwidth consumption during the day, but there were also peaks in the evening. "Users can't go to the movies and therefore consume more Netflix," explains Matthias Cramer, head of engineering at iWay. However, there is no reason to switch off Netflix; so far, the capacities are sufficient without any problems.
Good business prospects for 2020
"For 2020, we expect growth of around 10 percent," continues Matthias Oswald. As a result of the further development of fiber optics, we can assume that growth in the FTTH (fiber to the home) segment will be greater than for DSL connections. The fiber boom is likely to continue thanks to higher transmission speeds, the forthcoming "10 G" offering, and the continuing strong demand for lower-cost VoIP products and modular product bundles. Overall, the IT industry will benefit from the Corona Impact, he said. However, according to Matthias Cramer, the problem at the moment is hardware: due to production downtimes in Asia, there are currently delivery bottlenecks for routers and other devices.
