Retail giant Best Buy said today it will acquire service provider Speakeasy, a competitive player in the data and voice arena, for $97 million. The move is intended to establish Best Buy as a one-stop shop for small businesses, ratcheting up the competition in what is already becoming a hotly contested market segment.

Seattle-based Speakeasy, founded in 1994, parlayed its early experience as an ISP into a national presence in small business services, where it offers VoIP, data and IT services as a package to small businesses. The company has 40,000 customers in 48 states and had 2006 revenue of about $80 million.

“Best Buy For Business is all about helping small businesses grow or operate more efficiently through technology. By joining forces with Speakeasy, a company with a true passion for helping entrepreneurs run their businesses, we are making technology more accessible to small businesses by creating a single source for their IT needs,” said Darren Jackson, Best Buy executive vice president and CFO, in a prepared statement. “For small businesses and tech-savvy professionals, Speakeasy offers innovative IT and communications services, backed by outstanding network reliability and terrific customer support. We understand the small business customer and know that managing multiple service providers can be challenging. With Speakeasy in our portfolio, we are better equipped to provide our small business customers with one-stop shopping for all of their technology needs.”

Speakeasy will operate as a separate subsidiary of Best Buy once the deal closes, which is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2008. Bruce Chatterley, the company’s CEO, will remain with the company in his current role.