BT has announced today that they have agreed to acquire Madasafish with the purchase of the Brightview Group Limited which runs the ISP, Brightview plc have preliminarily accepted an offer from BT of £15.8 million.

This offer is still subject to a vote from shareholders but it is still looking close to being a done deal. The move will see approximately 62,000 broadband customers join up with Plusnet and BT users under the control of BT.

Brightview was established in 2001 and generated revenues of £11 million in the year ending June 2006. Brightview is a small consumer and business ISP running under a number of brand names including Global Internet, Waitrose Internet, GreenBee (in conjunction with John Lewis) and their most popular brand Madasafish.

Ian Livingston, BT Retail chief executive said, “BT already provides the UK’s most popular and best-performing ADSL broadband service. This acquisition will ensure that Brightview’s customers can benefit from our market-leading services, resources and technology development as well as the excellent customer service they’re already receiving.”

Brightview featured very heavily in the recent Watchdog survey with 3 of their ISPs in the top 4 in terms of customer satisfaction. This is a sign that BT are aiming to acquire quality ISPs as apposed to just quantity of numbers. This is reinforced as they recently passed up the chance to buy Pipex, an ISP with a significantly higher number of customers. There are also still rumours that Tiscali may be bought soon.

The Brightview Group will still run using the same brands under BT, and enthusiasm is high within the camp, as Samara Zittin from Madasafish customer services said "With BT's investment it means that we'll be able to extend an even greater product offering to our customers, whilst still maintaining the high level of customer service that Brightview ISPs are known for."

You can compare all the latest broadband deals at Top 10 Broadband.