I Squared Completes GTT Infra Deal, EXA Is Born

GTT’s sale of its infrastructure division is now a done deal. I Squared Capital has closed its purchase of the assets, and now we know something of their plans. They have re-launched the division under the name EXA Infrastructure.

EXA Infrastructure’s footprint starts out with the former Interoute, Hibernia Networks, and KPN International fiber, assets that span some 103,000 longhaul, metro, and subsea route kilometers connecting 500 PoPs in 300 cities. Most of the terrestrial assets are in Europe, with dark fiber in North America within the NYC/Ashburn/Chicago triangle.  Hibernia’s three transatlantic cables, now called EXA North, EXA South, and EXA Express connect those two regions.  Also included are some 14 Tier 3 data centers and 300 other colo facilities.

The company is led by former Telstra Global CEO Martijn Blanken, who has been appointed as the company’s first CEO. He leads a team of 420 employees, who made the jump from GTT. The task now will be to put those assets back on a path of growth, backed by the financial muscle at I Squared. Just how they approach that problem will be a story to watch over the next few years.

For its part, GTT will refocus on its cloud networking business, offering SD-WAN, security, internet, voice, etc under the leadership of CEO Ernie Ortega. According to their announcement earlier this month, that journey will take them through a prepackaged Chapter 11 process as they restructure their balance sheet.

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Categories: Internet Backbones · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber · Undersea cables