BICS Completes Acquisition of TeleSign

Brussels, October 31st 2017 – BICS, a global provider of international wholesale connectivity and interoperability services, today announced it has closed the acquisition of TeleSign, following the April 25th announcement of entering a definitive agreement to acquire the US-based CPaaS company for $230M. The closing of the acquisition creates the world’s first end-to-end CPaaS provider, bridging the market leading TeleSign cloud communications platform with one of the largest global carriers in the world.

TeleSign will continue to operate independently as a wholly-owned subsidiary of BICS with the brand name TeleSign. The company also continues under the leadership of CEO Aled Miles, and adds Daniel Kurgan, CEO of BICS, as the Chairman of the Board.

“We are pleased to have brought the TeleSign acquisition to completion and enthusiastic to add TeleSign’s deep pool of talent and expertise to the BICS family. This complementary combination accelerates several of our strategies for growth, including expanding our customer base, regional reach and product innovation. We have also broadened our expertise within the cloud communications development lifecycle, and will build and grow TeleSign’s established strong position in the fast-growing CPaaS and cloud security markets”, stated Daniel Kurgan, CEO of BICS and Chairman of TeleSign.

TeleSign has built a strong business in mobile identity, account security and cloud communication solutions and has been the trusted partner to the world’s top internet brands or mobile applications looking to engage and secure end-users. The acquisition strengthens TeleSign’s push into the high-growth communications platform as a service market. In a recent report, IDC forecasts the worldwide voice and text messaging communications platform-as-a-service market to grow from $867 million in 2016 to $8.2 billion in 20211.

“We’re powering a fundamental change in the way businesses engage their users. Our platform enables developers to add real-time communications and security into their applications without the need for complex backend infrastructure. Now backed by BICS’ extensive global network and its direct reach to over 700 mobile and fixed operators worldwide – TeleSign’s trusted platform is in a class by itself in terms of global reach, network reliability and overall quality of service,” said Aled Miles, CEO of TeleSign.

As businesses of all sizes and sectors embrace cloud communications to create innovative new services and transform how they communicate with their customers, this acquisition creates a clear leader in the field to help them achieve their goals. BICS and TeleSign will move forward focused on their respective core businesses while benefiting from immediate and future synergies in areas such as jointly investing in accelerating product roadmaps to speed up time to market and leveraging rich data reservoirs to enrich product offerings.

Ends

ABOUT TELESIGN
TeleSign is a communications platform as a service (CPaaS) company, founded on security. Since 2005, TeleSign has been a trusted partner to 20 of the top 25 global websites and mobile applications, helping secure billions of end-user accounts. Today, TeleSign’s data-driven, cloud communications platform is changing the way businesses engage with customers and prevent fraud.