Telecoms provider Retelit has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire BT Italia.
In the company’s announcement today (April 23), Retelit said it has entered into a preliminary agreement to snap up BT’s Italian business.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Last year, the unit generated revenues of about €160 million ($182m) in Italy.
For Retelit, the acquisition will strengthen its fiber optic network with an additional 11,500km (7,145 miles), resulting in a total network span exceeding 47,000km.
The company said it will also boost its national data center infrastructure by an additional 10MW of power capacity.
BT has more than 360 existing domestic clients. All of which will transition to Retelit.
The planned sale further outlines BT’s ambitions to consolidate its focus on the UK. Earlier this year. the company agreed to ecom Italia (TIM), were interested in buying the assets.
The company’s Italian unit was involved in a major accounting scandal in 2017. Several execs were charged with manipulating accounts, which led to the company taking a £530 million ($704m) charge, and eight were convicted earlier this year.
The planned sale further outlines BT’s ambitions to consolidate its focus on the UK. Earlier this year, the company agreed to sell its Irish wholesale and enterprise unit to Cordiant subsidiary Speed Fibre Group.
Just before Christmas, Equinix agreed to acquire BT Group’s Irish data center business for €59 million ($67.3m), a deal expected to be completed during the first half of this year.
It was separately confirmed last week that a consortium led by the Italian treasury agreed to pay €700 million ($792m) for TIM’s subsea cable unit Sparkle. Retelit, a company controlled by the Asterion fund, was part of the consortium.
Read the orginal article: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/retelit-to-acquire-bt-italys-operations/