CityFibre acquires duct and fibre networks from Redcentric

CityFibre has completed the acquisition of all the metropolitan local access duct and fibre network assets of leading IT Managed Services provider Redcentric, adding at least 137km to its network.

The deal extends the carrier’s network to three more cities – Cambridge, Portsmouth and Southampton along with complementary incremental coverage in a number of its existing city footprints including Nottingham, Derby and Northampton. It also saves CityFibre considerable time and millions of pounds in capex when compared to a self-build alternative.

CityFibre now owns metro networks in 40 major UK cities, helping to position the company as an increasingly powerful national competitor to BT Openreach (see CityFibre expands nationally with KCOM network purchase).

As part of the £5 million transaction, CityFibre has secured £4.5 million in long-term dark fibre leasing commitments from Redcentric, who become a major new customer. Redcentric will continue to operate the fibre infrastructure to serve the connected customers. CityFibre’s new network will continue to serve 188 Redcentric customer connections.

Redcentric has also entered into a framework agreement with CityFibre that allows it to use CityFibre’s national infrastructure in future. As with all its network assets, CityFibre will soon make the new footprint available to its wholesale customers, who are business service providers, public sector service integrators, mobile operators and data centres.

The newly acquired networks, such as the 44km footprint throughout Cambridge, are all routed to address local areas of identified high demand for high-bandwidth services. In Cambridge, the network reaches many of the city’s key science, business and research parks, home to a vast range of the UK’s most successful high technology businesses.

Greg Mesch, chief executive officer of CityFibre commented: “We’re delighted with today’s acquisition of fibre network assets from Redcentric, which takes us to an important milestone of coverage of 40 cities. Once again we’ve shown that underutilised legacy fibre assets can find a new home in which to flourish within CityFibre’s wholesale shared infrastructure model. We’re very pleased to have secured a deal structure which benefits both our new partner and us, and we look forward to working with Redcentric across our broader national footprint.”