Tuesday Bytes: Uniti, Macquarie, DRFortress, HGC

Four interesting items from the APAC region to start off the week, one possibly misunderstood M&A, a couple data center expansions, and a new PoP:

Down in Australia, Uniti Group has announced a deal to acquire rival network operator OptiComm for $532M. The deal brings together two fiber footprints as well as substanial fixed wireless and a bunch of last mile access under one roof. But there seems to be some name confusion here, as Adelaide-based Uniti Group is not the same as the US-based Uniti Group that recently concluded its contract negotiations with Windstream, although Capacity may disagree.

Macquarie Data Centers, an arm of Macquarie Telecom Group, is building a new data center facility in Canberra. The first stage of the new Intellicentre 5 facility will cost $17M and add 1.5MW to the company’s footprint by the end of the year. Macquarie has seen a rapid expansion in business from the Australian government. ANZ Banking Group has increased the syndicated banking facilities available from $100M to $140M to help fund the deal.

DRFortress is expanding its campus in Honoloulu, Hawaii. They plan to add 130 cabinets, giving them 600 in all and a total space of 55,000 square feet. The company is seeing a surge in customer demand for connectivity, cloud, and CDN solutions throughout the region, in part driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The expansion is expected to be ready by Q4 of 2020.

And HGC had added another PoP in southeast Asia. The Hong Kong-based network operator has launched a third location in Bangkok, Thailand. HGC has an extensive presence in the Greater Mekong Subregion already, and this further increases their depth. In addition, they have activated a direct route backbone between Hong Kong and Singapore.

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Categories: Datacenter · FTTH · Internet Backbones · Mergers and Acquisitions