Virtual network operator (VNO) Vanco has provided details of some big-name customer wins and contract renewals. The managed services company, from whom clients source network specification, provision and management from a detailed knowledge base of the global telecoms network, used the platform at its AGM in Barcelona this week to fill in the details of the recent deals.

In March, supermarket Somerfield will be going live with a WiMAX-accessed wide area network (WAN) specified by Vanco in preference to a DSL solution. The network will give Somerfield access to 50 cities in the UK, and was delivered with zero modification to the company's datacentre.

Vanco claims to have been the first company in the world to deliver WiMAX access to a corporate WAN.

Vanco also announced a three-year deal with pan-European sports channel Eurosport to connect a dozen sites around the globe, including France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and China.

"It was customised to our needs combining different carriers' solutions and unique technical offers, such as the usage of several backbones and local xDSL access," said Stéphane Gaudé, Eurosport infrastructure manager. "From a financial point of view, the solution will allow us to considerably reduce the cost of our network."

Vanco is asset-light and technology- and carrier-neutral, meaning that it can pick and choose services from up to 700 asset-based carriers (ABCs) and suppliers worldwide, using data it has amassed over more than two decades in the industry.

Vanco also announced a five-year, £4.5 million deal with high-street opticians Specsavers to design, manage and implement its global WAN, using DSL across more than 800 sites in six countries. The opticians giant plans to expand and has sourced networking expertise to help it build for the future. Ruskin Snow, Specsavers' IT operations manager said, "We have the freedom to carry on growing and evolving. This combination of services allows us to concentrate on what we do best."

Also signed and served up from the Catalan table was a deal with UK food giant Premier Foods. The parent of brands such as Hovis, Mr Kipling, Bisto, Branston, Batchelors and Quorn has a turnover of £2.7 billion and employs more than 20,000 people in the UK alone. It sourced the design, implementation and management of a highly resilient MPLS network connecting some 83 sites in the UK from Vanco.

However, not everything was plain sailing for Vanco, which was celebrating 20 years of its business model. Pierre Combemale, CIO of Vesuvius, a manufacturer of high-end refractory products for industrial applications, was openly critical of parts of Vanco's business– despite being given the floor to praise the company, not to bury it. Combemale said Vanco was "not perfect" and that its invoicing was "a nightmare" – not the most glowing terms for a company sourced to lessen the pain of networking.

In an interview with sourcingfocus, Vanco CEO Allen Timpany was as upbeat and robust as his surname might suggest, and blamed a new deployment of the company's Oracle accounting system for the complaints.

Other executives, however, acknowledged that having such a vast supplier base meant that it was not always possible to hide complexity from the customer. (See separate news analysis).

Despite visibly rattling the Vanco board, the Vesuvius eruption did not stop the company from signing a five-year extension of its WAN upgrade and management deal.