Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown became group chief executive of Onecom on 1 May 2026, 13 years after co-founding it with Darren Ridge through the merger of Premier Telecom and Business Phones Direct. He had returned to the business as chief operating officer in June 2025. Ridge, who had taken over as chief executive after Martin Flick left in the summer of 2025, moved back to a non-executive role.

Announcing his appointment, Brown said: “Our focus now is on accelerating growth, executing with pace, and scaling what we know works.”

A £205m communications group

Accounts for parent company Solo Topco, filed on 24 September 2026, show revenue rose 3.4% to £205.2m in 2025. Management EBITDA rose 10.4% to £38.4m, an 18.7% margin, which the directors credited to higher-margin acquisitions and earlier efficiency work. About 87% of revenue is recurring. Onecom says it serves more than 65,000 UK businesses with over 900 staff. The Hampshire-based group is backed by LDC and Ares Management, which provided its refinancing in January 2025.

From phones to managed IT

Onecom has made 14 acquisitions in five years, most recently Gradwell Communications in 2025 and Matrix IT, a South Coast Microsoft partner with more than 45 staff, bought in January 2026 for up to £3.8m. In July 2026 Onecom combined Matrix with its own IT managed services division as OnecomMatrix, an 80-person managed IT and security business. It has also launched Wave, a cloud phone platform built on Gradwell’s technology, and Halo, an agentic AI platform for customer and employee interactions.

Why it matters to the channel

Onecom is one of the largest efforts in the UK channel to turn a mobile and telecoms reseller into a managed IT provider through acquisition. Much of its mobile income arrives as a revenue share from Vodafone, which bears a large proportion of the mobile customer credit risk. OnecomMatrix, Wave and Halo add managed IT, security, cloud voice and AI to the mobile contracts it already sells.

Brown co-founded the business and knows it better than any outside hire could. He now leads it into managed IT with 14 acquisitions, a £205m revenue base and 87% of income recurring behind him.