Dgtl Infra provides a roundup of noteworthy digital infrastructure events in the sub-sectors of towers, data centers, and fiber, announced during the week commencing June 6, 2022. Digital infrastructure investors and providers including Asterion Industrial Partners, Bandwidth IG, CoreSite, Digital Realty, Vantage Data Centers, and Windstream, all make early June 2022’s digital infrastructure roundup list.
To get the most important digital infrastructure stories of the week delivered to your inbox, subscribe to Dgtl Infra’s Weekly News Roundup here.
Towers – Digital Infrastructure Mid-Week Roundup
Spain to Award TowerCos €150m to Deploy Sites in Rural Areas
- Government of Spain will provide €150m in subsidies to finance the construction of 5G-capable passive infrastructure along roads & railways, and in rural areas of Spain
- Spain’s largest tower companies are set to benefit, including American Tower (11.5k sites), Cellnex (10.4k sites), Vantage Towers (8.6k sites), TOTEM (7.9k sites), and Axión (635 sites)
Helios Towers Revises 2.9k-Site, $615m Deal for Omantel’s Towers
- Helios Towers revised its previously announced agreement to acquire 2.9k tower sites from Omantel, the largest wireless carrier of Oman (Middle East), for $575m in cash, representing an enterprise value of $615m
- Presently, Rakiza Telecommunication Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Oman Infrastructure Fund, will purchase a 30% minority stake in the newly incorporated holding company for Omantel’s passive infrastructure assets, with Helios Towers purchasing the remaining 70% – previously the minority stake sale was not contemplated
- Also, Helios Towers expects the acquisition will now close around the end of Q2 2022
Data Centers – Digital Infrastructure Mid-Week Roundup
CoreSite Integrates American Tower’s Atlanta and Orlando Data Centers
- CoreSite has integrated three of American Tower’s data centers into its ecosystem: Atlanta AT1 (55 Marietta Street NW, Atlanta, Georgia), Atlanta AT2 (1130 Powers Ferry Place, Marietta, Georgia), and Orlando OR1 (9701 S. John Young Parkway, Orlando, Florida)
- These three American Tower data centers, which span over 250k sqft, come from the former operations of DataSite and Colo-ATL
- CoreSite’s data center portfolio now includes 27 data centers in 10 markets, 450+ networks, 23 cloud on-ramps, and 35k+ interconnections
Digital Realty Appoints Mary Hogan Preusse as Chair of the Board
- Effective August 2022, Mary Hogan Preusse will succeed Laurence Chapman as Digital Realty’s Chairman of the Board. Chapman will remain on Digital Realty’s Board of Directors
- From 2000 to 2017, Preusse served as Managing Director and co-head of Americas Real Estate at APG Asset Management, managing the firm’s public real estate investments in North and South America
- Before APG, Preusse spent 8 years as a sell-side analyst covering the REIT sector
Strategic Datasphere Buys 187k sqft Cleveland Data Center
- Strategic Datasphere completed the acquisition of a 187k sqft facility at 4150 W 150th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, from Legacy Investing
- PNC Bank, an investment-grade financial institution, leases 48.5k sqft (26%) of the facility and has ~14 years of lease term remaining on its current lease
- Additionally, the property has 138.5k sqft of space available to lease. Within this space, there is an 8k sqft turn-key data hall that can supply 3 megawatts of critical power
- READ MORE: Strategic Capital forms Datasphere and makes $80m Acquisition of E*TRADE Data Center
H5 Data Centers and Arelion Enhance Connectivity in Ohio
- H5 Data Centers is a colocation and wholesale data center provider which operates 22 data centers, across 3+ million sqft, in 20 U.S. markets
- Arelion, a global IP backbone, has deployed a new point-of-presence (PoP) at H5 Data Centers’ 351k sqft facility located at 1625 Rockwell Avenue in downtown Cleveland, Ohio
Khazna Data Centers Grows Planned Capacity to 300 MW
- Khazna Data Centers has grown its data center portfolio to 12 operational, 13 under construction, and a further 3 in the pipeline, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Middle East, following the merger of e& (fka Etisalat Group) and G42’s data centers
- In total, Khazna’s operational and development portfolio comprises over 300 megawatts of planned capacity
Africa Data Centres to Build 30 MW in Accra, Ghana
- Africa Data Centres is building a 30-megawatt hyperscale data center in Accra, Ghana (West Africa)
- Grows company’s existing West Africa data center presence beyond Nigeria and Togo
- Forms part of Africa Data Centres’ $500m investment program to add 10 hyperscale data centers in 10 countries in Africa
- Tesh Durvasula (formerly CyrusOne) serves as CEO of Africa Data Centres
- 2Africa subsea cable is planned to land in Accra, Ghana, enhancing connectivity for the country/region
ESR and CLP Sign MoU to Develop Data Centers in Hong Kong
- ESR Group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with CLP Power and CLPe Group to develop data centers in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area (GBA)
Vantage Data Centers Inks 20-Year PPA for South Africa Campus
- Vantage Data Centers entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with SolarAfrica to secure 87MWp of solar energy for its Johannesburg data center campus
- Upon completion, Vantage’s Johannesburg (JNB1) data center campus will have 80 megawatts of IT capacity, of which up to 33% is expected to be supported by solar
- READ MORE: Vantage Earmarks $1bn+ for 80 MW South Africa Data Center
Iron Mountain, Web Werks JV Expands in Noida, India
- Web Werks plans to invest ~$25m into a new hyperscale data center in Noida, India
- Construction of Web Werks’ new Noida data center, with 20 MVA of gross power capacity, will begin in 2022 and will be ready for service in 2023
- As of Q1 2022, Iron Mountain has made an investment of $50.1m (3.75bn Indian Rupees) into its Web Werks joint venture for data centers in India
Fiber – Digital Infrastructure Mid-Week Roundup
Asterion Industrial Partners Bids €400m for IRIDEOS – Bloomberg
- Asterion has made a binding offer to acquire IRIDEOS at a valuation of up to €400m
- IRIDEOS operates over 18.6k miles (30k kilometers) of fiber and 15 interconnected data centers in Milan, Rome, Trento, and Verona, Italy
- IRIDEOS is currently 80%-owned by F2i SGR, Italy’s largest infrastructure fund manager, and 20%-owned by Marguerite, a European infrastructure investor
- Relatedly, in 2021, Asterion Industrial Partners acquired Retelit, at a €468m valuation, which is a wholesale provider of fiber services with a portfolio of 9.9k miles (16.0k kilometers) of fiber throughout Italy
Bandwidth IG Brings Dark Fiber to Portland / Hillsboro, Oregon
- Bandwidth Infrastructure Group (Bandwidth IG) is a metro dark fiber provider in the United States, which is owned by Columbia Capital, a private equity firm
- Company announced that its dark fiber connectivity solutions are now available in the Portland / Hillsboro, Oregon area, serving data centers, hyperscalers, and enterprises
- Hillsboro is a rapidly growing U.S. data center market, with Portland overall having nearly 100 megawatts of commissioned power and nearly 200 megawatts of additional capacity pre-leased at several major data center projects currently in development
- Bandwidth IG’s Hillsboro network is currently on-net to 14 data centers
Apollo Global’s Brightspeed Sets Out North Carolina Fiber Plan
- Brightspeed is a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) provider which will be backed by Apollo Global Management, following completion of its pending $7.5bn acquisition of Lumen Technologies’ ILEC business
- Company set out the first phase of its fiber-optic network build plans for North Carolina, where it expects to deliver, by the end of 2023, over 300k new fiber passings in portions of 30+ counties
- Specifically, Brightspeed is targeting the markets of Greenville/New Bern, Raleigh/Durham, and Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem
- In subsequent years, Brightspeed plans to add an incremental 500k fiber passings, for a total of up to 800k fiber-enabled locations across its North Carolina footprint
FirstLight Grows Network in Maine to 3.6k Fiber Route Miles
- FirstLight provides fiber-optic data, internet, data center, cloud, and voice services to enterprise and carrier customers throughout the Northeast and mid-Atlantic United States. The company’s financial sponsor is Antin Infrastructure Partners
- Company has reached 3.6k fiber route miles in Maine, having added ~300 route miles of new fiber throughout the state since 2019. Moreover, FirstLight will build an additional 121 route miles of fiber in Maine by year-end 2022
- FirstLight provides broadband to the following types of institutions and businesses in Maine: K-12, higher education, healthcare, state & local government, financial services, manufacturers, retailers, and small businesses
Ziply Fiber to Acquire ISP EONI in Oregon
- Ziply Fiber is a residential broadband provider in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, which is backed by Searchlight Capital Partners, PSP Investments, CPP Investments, BCI, and WaveDivision Capital
- Company agreed to acquire EONI (Eastern Oregon Net, Inc), an internet service provider (ISP) in Oregon
- EONI’s primary offerings are fiber internet, fixed wireless, and voice solutions for residential and commercial customers in Baker, Union, and Wallowa counties
- The acquisition is expected to close later in 2022
Windstream Launches 400G Wave Services on New Routes
Windstream’s Wholesale division now offers 400G wave services on its high-capacity, low-latency transport network on the following routes:
- Ashburn, Virginia, to Chicago, Denver, San Jose, and Los Angeles
- Atlanta to Dallas, Phoenix, San Jose, and Los Angeles
- Seattle to Portland, San Jose, and Los Angeles
- Chicago to Dallas and Atlanta
Bluebird Network Expands Fiber Network in Iowa and Kansas
- Bluebird Network is an operator of over 10.6k miles of fiber, with backing from Macquarie Infrastructure Partners (MIP)
- Company announced that its fiber expansion in Waterloo, Iowa is live, with an additional expansion in Salina, Kansas underway, which will be ready for service by the end of June 2022
- Projects add 11.7 miles of fiber within Waterloo, Iowa and 13.6 miles of fiber in Salina, Kansas
- Bluebird plans to bring fiber to 5 more communities within Illinois in 2022
DE-CIX Establishes Interconnection with LOGIX Fiber Networks
- DE-CIX, an Internet Exchange (IX) operator, has established an interconnection with LOGIX Fiber Networks in Dallas, Texas, by providing access to DE-CIX Dallas
- LOGIX Fiber Networks is an enterprise and dark fiber provider in Texas which serves enterprise and carriers with over 7.0k route miles and nearly 300k strand miles of fiber
- By interconnecting its network with DE-CIX Dallas, LOGIX customers can obtain transport connectivity via DE-CIX’s platform, with direct access to cloud providers and content networks. In turn, this interconnection eliminates third-party connectivity costs in Dallas and traditional colocation requirements
