Mike Harris is a Welsh businessman and football chairman. He is the founder of Total Network Solutions, a telecom solutions provider that was acquired by British Telecom in 2005. In 2013, he founded SiFi Networks to provide open access Internet in North America.
Since the late 90s, he has been involved with The New Saints F.C., becoming the clubs chairman in 2003. In the past two decades, Harris has built one of the most successful clubs in European football. The New Saints broke Ajax's top flight record of consecutive wins, after recording 27 wins in a row in 2016.
Education & early career
Harris was born in Welshpool in Wales. He attended Buttington Trewern County Primary School, before Welshpool High School. He left school aged 16, securing an apprenticeship with British Telecom. The apprenticeship lasted three years, where he specialised as a strowger engineer. Around this time, he moved to Shrewsbury to work as part of the maintenance team for BT's telephone exchange.
Business career
Total Network Solutions (1987-2005) Harris worked in telephone maintenance, including trouble shooting, and in BT’s computer centers implementing distributed data to the desktop until the late 1980s, when System X was introduced as a digital switching system to modernise the exchange. Harris saw a gap in the market where businesses were introducing voice and data systems to the desktop and saw the opportunity to set up his own business. Harris collaborated with Roger Samuels while working on a project for one of his clients, adopting Harris’ vision. In 1991, they decided to merge the two consultancies to form Total Network Solutions (TNS).
Total Network Solutions continued to offer the consultancy service Harris had been doing since 1988, but also offered the design, implementation and maintenance of telecom solutions. The new approach was to take products and the consultancy, combine them to create solutions and then take responsibility for delivering the solutions to business. TNS achieved half a million turnover in its first year. He and co-founder Samuels imported technology from the United States, which gave the company an edge over other providers in both cost and the advanced technology. By 1993, TNS had grown to £18 million turnover and a staff of 120 people. TNS featured - on three separate occasions - in the Financial Times' Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies during this period.
In the mid-1990s, TNS began to maintain Cisco Systems. This allowed them to secure numerous notable clients such as the University of Bath, Abbey National Bank, and Heinz Foods. They installed high speed lines for various university campuses and other large site institutions such as hospitals or councils. TNS also supplied and maintained datacomms for many early internet providers in the UK, such as BusinessNet, AOL, and Level Three. In 2000, Harris became the sole owner of TNS after buying out his business partner Samuels.
Harris and TNS then played a major role in the rollout of broadband infrastructure in the United Kingdom. This included many areas of the UK, such as Anglesey, which were overlooked by those managing fibre expansion. The success of TNS led to Harris winning the Ernst & Young Technology and Communication Entrepreneur of the Year in 2001 and also a nomination for the same award in 2003. In 2005, British Telecom acquired TNS from Harris in a multi-million pound deal.
SiFi Networks & other investments (2013-present) Harris and Roland Pickstock co-founded SiFi Networks to provide privately funded open access, city-wide fibre networks in the United States. The aim was to offer an alternative to the telecomms solutions of the time, where low speeds and only one provider to choose from was common when the business was founded in 2013. In 2021, The company received investments of circa $1 billion from Patrizia and from Dutch pension fund, APG. The funds are being deployed to roll out of fibre networks in the US developing their fibre networks under their fibre city brand in the US, Future Fiber Networks LLC (“Future Fiber”). This has, to date, has included Fullerton, Placentia, East Hartford, Saratoga, New York and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The New Saints Football Club
In 2005, Total Network Solutions famously hosted Champions League winners Liverpool in the qualifying round in the defence of their title. Harris sold Total Network Solutions to British Telecom and exited the business he co-founded. At the time, he was serving as both the Managing Director of TNS and chairman of the Welsh football club of the same name.