EXA Infrastructure to buy Bulgarian telco GCN

This acquisition marks a ‘significant expansion’ of EXA Infrastructure's strategic assets in South-Eastern Europe, states the release. The deal will see it acquire the entirety of GCN's products and services, including dark fibre, wavelength and colocation services.

The acquisition of GCN's network will provide EXA with access to international interconnection points in Turkey, Greece, Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia and Georgia. The firm says this region has grown in significance due to the traffic volumes entering Europe from Asia and the Middle East, and also ‘due to the greater focus on network redundancy and alternative route provisioning given the lack of diversity around the Red Sea.’

Thanks to the deal, EXA says it will own 155,000km of fibre network infrastructure across 37 countries, ‘strengthening its position as the largest owned network connecting Europe to the rest of the world.’

"The GCN network consists of over 2,500km of owned duct and cable connecting Sofia with all the borders neighbouring Bulgaria as well as the Black Sea coast cities of Balchik, Varna and Burgas,” said Steve Roberts, SVP of network investments and products at EXA Infrastructure. “Each of these locations are strategically important for existing and planned subsea cables, creating a natural east-west corridor. EXA Infrastructure also gains 100km of metro network connecting key data centres and business zones within Sofia. By adding the GCN assets into our expanding network, we continue to offer our customers more route options and more scalability traffic into and around Europe."

Jim Fagan, CEO, EXA Infrastructure, added: "This acquisition further extends our network presence in South-Eastern Europe, and continues to differentiate our capabilities in serving customers for their critical infrastructure needs across the breadth of Europe. We have near term plans to expand our network both organically and through acquisition to bring more value, options and services to our customers in an ever-changing digital world."

Completion of the deal is subject to ‘certain customary conditions’ – which presumably means regulatory box ticking – and is expected to be completed in Q4 this year.