With my business background I always had a strong understanding of technology from an end user perspective. That was my strength. I was not a programmer. So I became the guy in the middle who could understand the technology. From 1990 to 1994 I was heavily involved with banking systems. And in 1995 in a newspaper advertisement caught my eye. Sales Placement was searching for a chief executive for an internet business on behalf of an unidentified client.
I had left Ireland in 1987, aged 23, and worked as a chartered accountant for Deloitte Haskins + Sells in London. Later on I worked in Woodchester Bank’s London office. But the plan was always to return to work in Dublin and live in Skerries where I had grown up.
At the start of 1993 I moved back as an associate director of Woodchester, based at its headquarters in Dublin. During my time in London I had introduced credit scoring and installed voice communications systems with predictive dialling. My new role at the bank was to reorganise its branch network, achieving improvements and efficiencies by aggregating technologies and standardising practices.
After a couple of years that work was done. My job was no longer necessary and I started looking around for something else to do.
The bank had been using dial-up databases for years, so I already knew something about online services. I could also see that the future would be based on the internet. That led me to answer the Sales Placement advertisement in July 1995.
Following an initial meeting with the agency I was interviewed by a member of the Moyna family, who ran a company called Dome Industries in the border region. They too had decided that the internet was the future. The company had already put all the technology in place to become an internet service provider. But it needed somebody to run the shop. The interview went very well. Although I was one of two candidates for the post, I was offered the job on the spot.
We went straight from the interview to the network operations centre in Fitzwilliam Lane. When I walked in, I saw that it was really serious. This set-up was like a dream come true. There was a T1 connection into AT&T. The routers, modems and web servers were all brand new. The centre had been designed by a crew from Canada called iStar. It already had some technical staff, led by Gerry Walsh. John Kane was the main networking guy, John Clancy was the IT director and Seamus McCarville was marketing manager.
Some members of the founding family would also take on management roles in the new operation. Michael Moyna was very technical and David Moyna became our finance director.
We had a real opportunity to become the biggest ISP in the country. As yet, however, there was no business plan – not a single page written. That was going to be my job.
Indigo went live on 8 December 1995. I had come up with the name and branding because I liked the simplicity of it. We established our administration processes. We produced start-up kits for customers with help from iStar and a local disk duplication company. We worked with McCann Erickson on newspaper advertising and a teaser campaign on billboards. Then we ran an Indigo launch ceremony that included an audio-visual presentation by one of the team behind U2’s stage show.
This was the first real attempt to bring the internet to the masses in Ireland. I never thought in terms of taking customers from other ISPs. I always felt that Indigo was going to create a bigger pie. We were spending a lot of money to make more people aware of the internet and its opportunities.
Michael Branagan demonstrates Indigo’s web site to Taoiseach John Bruton.
On 8 December Taoiseach John Bruton called into the Indigo office and I gave him a tour. He had seen the internet before, but during our demo it became clear to his and all our amusement that he did not know how to use a mouse. He subsequently became very computer literate. There was a film crew on the premises to privately record the launch. Unfortunately the Taoiseach made a very topical self-deprecating joke on camera and later on it was used against him by political opponents.
By the start of 1996 we were satisfied with how the launch had gone and were driving rapidly ahead. The next six months were like a whirlwind. The internet access business was still so new and so uncharted. I felt that the future looked bright and that Indigo was just starting on a ten-year project. I hired a lot of young people. By the start of the summer there were 50 people working in the company.
We built up a relationship with Microsoft very quickly, promoting web access in association with Windows 95. This soon became a complete love-in ! The Windows Show at the RDS in May was a joint branding exercise by the two companies. Microsoft and Indigo also collaborated with the National Information Technology in Education Centre to offer free internet access to thousands of Irish schools – a service that the schools should already have had. We were very proud of this initiative.
In March the government named a 20-member steering committee to advise it on information society issues. I was the only ISP representative on that task force. The meetings were characterised by continual friction against the monopoly telco – Telecom Eireann – by the new telcos including Denis O’Brien’s Esat and Nick Koumarianos’s Cable and Wireless Ireland. They were constantly sniping at each other but we did produce a viable report in the end.
Indigo still had virtually no revenue. Dome Industries funded the whole operation, including the salaries, and I was always told that it had deep pockets.
In May and June, however, a series of things happened that made me ask where the money was coming from. I was made aware of certain facts. And I resigned from Indigo on 4 July 1996.
This was one of the greatest disappointments in my life. I have never spoken publicly about my departure. All I will say now is that my alternatives were to leave the company or to let it fall. I found myself in an untenable position.
Indigo survived. The Moyna family sold the business to Shay Moran in August 1996 and he sold it to Telecom Eireann in the following year.
I tried to set up Indigo Mark 2. It was now obvious that there would be a race to the top among the internet service providers. Only a small number of players would be able to stay on top of the plinth and they would need the critical mass to run a nationwide service. Several other people left Indigo when I did and some of them joined me. I formed a core team of five people and opened an office in Skerries. We presented our plans to companies like Esat and Telecom Eireann, but were not able to implement them.
In 1997 Telecom launched a competition to select an ‘information age town’ – a testbed for new communications technologies. This attracted many more applications than expected. After Ennis won the prize, Telecom and Microsoft decided to capitalise on the nationwide interest it had generated. I pitched to them that they should run a post-competition roadshow. We went into towns around the country, staged information age presentations in the biggest available hall and gave away goodies such as internet access packs.
Barry Breslin approached me at one of those events. He ran a cyber-café in Dublin and had launched the ISP Internet Ireland in March 1996. We hooked up together and I eventually became managing director of the company.
Internet Ireland was a service provider for corporates. It was also good at software development. We developed a web strategy for newspapers and initially pitched it at the regional titles. In those days the papers were the font of all information for their respective areas. They were still thick with classified ads and some of them were becoming aware that the internet might threaten this income. I travelled the length and breath of the country visiting each one and trying to convince them that they needed to act quickly to migrate into the digital space.
Then we started talking to Independent Newspapers, which had not yet come up with its own internet strategy. The group needed to leapfrog the technology and we could help it to do so. Television service provider Princes Holdings, which was jointly owned by TeleCommunications and Independent Newspapers, acquired Internet Ireland in January 2000. The timing of this sale was good for us, because the dot com bubble burst soon afterwards. We launched Unison as the brand for the regional papers ‘coming together as one’.
I stayed with Internet Ireland until 2002. As the Unison project evolved, we began delivering internet access through TV set-top boxes. That was a fantastic model for providing streams of content into peoples’ homes.
Looking at the technology today, I believe that we have only scratched the surface of what the internet is capable of achieving. We still ain’t seen nothing yet.
Last edit: December 2015
© Michael Branagan 2015