The Australian Securities Exchange allowed Internet service provider iiNet (ASX: IIN) to voluntarily suspend on Friday trading of its shares pending a buy-in.

The company had actually suspended trading since Wednesday.

Reports said the firm is interested in acquiring telco TransACT which is based in Canberra. TransACT has 151,000 residential customers, 50 federal and state government agency clients and more than 5,000 small business subscribers.

TransACT is partly owned by Actew Corporation, a 50 per cent joint venture with ActewAGL. It provides broadband Internet access, fixed telephone, cable TV and mobile phone services in the Australian Capital Territory and Queanbeyan, the southeast part of New South Wales and Victoria.

iiNet had some similarities in its beginnings with Apple because it was started by founder, Michael Malone, from his parent's garage in 1993 in Padbury. Since then it has spread to four countries with 1,800 employees.

Mr Malone, who was named on Thursday as Australia's entrepreneur of the year, said he started the firm after he left the university.

"We were aiming to get two or three hundred customers, that would have been enough to cover all the costs and it would have meant that I had Internet access then," ABC News quoted Mr Malone.

"It is that miracle of starting off in a garage at the right time in the right place and then it does, it turns from a hobbyist business into a big national company and it's growing every year," he added.

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