Charlie Muirhead, the internet entrepreneur and founder of Orchestream, has teamed up with Cisco Systems to unveil a company he has built up in secret over the past 18 months.

Nexagent, based in Reading, Berkshire, will provide an information exchange and software to allow telecoms carriers to stitch together their data networks and offer a performance-guaranteed service to businesses.

The company is thought to have raised nearly Pounds 15m, mostly from venture capital funds. It targets a much larger market than Orchestream, the data prioritisation start-up for which Mr Muirhead shot to fame.

He has since moved to a non-executive role there and, following the telecoms rout, the company is now worth Pounds 9.2m, compared with Pounds 873m at the height of the internet bubble.

Nexagent was founded in July 2000, under the working name Interprovider, by Mr Muirhead and Chris Gare, formerly at Cable & Wireless.

"One of the reasons we have been in stealth mode until now is we didn't want other people to copy us," said Mr Muirhead.

"But we are now comfortable with the lead we have in the market and we have filed patents on our architecture."

Nexagent plans to launch commercial services in the third quarter of this year.
The regulation of the voice network market has meant telecoms carriers have had to create partnerships to deliver international services.

But in data communications, the operators have tried to build their own international networks.

"Until now, managed IP services have usually been confined within a single carrier's network footprint," said Steve Priestley, European vice-president of Cisco Systems Services Providers.