Foreign companies are flooding into the UK to pick up a slice of the consumer internet market. This is according to internet hosting expert UKFast, which has found that over a third of new enterprise-level clients of its services are based overseas.

‘It is great for hosting companies like us to take on huge solutions from countries like the US and Germany but it presents a stark reality,’ grumbles managing director Lawrence Jones. ‘The global marketplace allows anyone to do business with UK consumers. For the benefit of the UK economy, the home-grown talent needs to be aware of the competition and be prepared to challenge it.’

And if a possible foreign invasion wasn’t enough, the UK’s internet infrastructure may be in danger if the country is besieged by further flooding. Since key internet exchange points such as the world’s second largest information exchange LINX are all based in London, Dr Aydin Kurt-Elli, chief executive of internet service provider Lumison, says the UK could be ‘sleep-walking’ into a national network disaster: ‘The potent combination of flood risk in the Thames gateway, potentially affecting London Docklands, and datacenter pricing rising by almost 300 per cent in 18 months means that we need a fundamental rethink.’