CityFibre acquires all Redcentric duct and fibre networks

CityFibre adds Cambridge, Portsmouth and Southampton footprints, taking its presence to 40 cities

CityFibre has today completed the acquisition of all metropolitan local access duct and fibre network assets of leading IT Managed Services provider Redcentric. These assets total at least 137km. The deal accelerates CityFibre’s recent growth still further as it now owns 40 major UK metro networks, becoming an increasingly powerful national competitor to BT Openreach.

Pursuant to its strategy of growing footprint through acquisition of non-incumbent owned fibre infrastructure assets, the deal provides CityFibre with significant metro networks in Cambridge, Portsmouth and Southampton along with complementary incremental coverage in a number of 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.

In the £5m network acquisition, CityFibre has secured £4.5m 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. As part of the transaction, Redcentric has also entered into a framework agreement with CityFibre for the use of CityFibre’s infrastructure across its national footprint in future. As with all its network assets, CityFibre will soon make the new footprint available to its wholesale partners comprising business ISPs, public sector service integrators, mobile operators and data centres amongst others.

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. This will be of immediate benefit to CityFibre’s partners. 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. Once made widely available, the networks will also benefit the wider local communities as they attract inward investment and stimulate economic development.

Fraser Fisher, Chief Executive Officer of Redcentric said:

“This disposal is in line with our strategy of control over our customer affecting core assets while not tying up capital where ownership is unnecessary. We will continue to service customers in Cambridge and Portsmouth exactly as before, and expect to generate additional revenues and network efficiencies over time as a result of our developing relationship with CityFibre.”

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer of CityFibre said:

“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.”