LinkAGE Online, a wholly owned Hong Kong subsidiary of PSINet, recently purchased smaller Hong Kong provider AsiaNet.
AsiaNet is the second ISP that LinkAGE has acquired in three months. In September, the PSINet subsidiary took over Hong Kong Internet and Gateway Services.
With AsiaNet’s negligible amount of dial-up users, industry observers believe that the smaller ISP’s 60 corporate lease-line customers were the attraction.
This is consistent with LinkAGE’s desire to develop its Web design and corporate Internet solutions business.
“Web technologies are critical for corporate customers to deploy their Internet strategies,” said Catherine Mok, marketing manager for LinkAGE. “We provide high performance and reliable platform to them so that they can implement multimedia and various Internet applications on the Net.”
Some of LinkAGE’s prominent corporate clients include Parknshop, TDC Exhibitions, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Cathay Pacific, Bank of East Asia, Morgan Stanley, and Shell China.
LinkAGE claims to be the largest provider of corporate dedicated connections and that it is the only Hong Kong provider to operate a transpacific DS-3 ATM Internet backbone between Hong Kong and the United States.
“We are planning to increase our overseas bandwidth and link up with other Asian PSINet subsidiaries such as Japan and Korea,” said Mok.”PSINet headquarters will do a lot of R&D so that we can implement much more innovative Internet services in Hong Kong like Internet telephony.”