TeliaSonera acquires cloud & hosting outfit Ipeer

TeliaSonera has acquired Ipeer AB, a cloud and hosting service provider for the Swedish corporate sector. According to TeliaSonera, the purchase will enhance its network and access portfolio, and enable it to offer completely new solutions to customers.

”The acquisition of Ipeer means that we will be able to deliver new types of cloud services supplementing our strong offering of business solutions,” Malin Frenning, Executive Vice President of TeliaSonera and Head of Region Sweden said. “Ipeer provides technology and competence in cloud and hosting services for both small and large companies. Thanks to our billion investment in infrastructure, we will be able to offer total solutions allowing our business customers to use the almost unlimited opportunities provided by the digitalization in society.”

Ipeer, previously owned by holding company Applewise, has 65 employees and generated SEK56.7 million ($7.8 million) in revenues in 2013. It has operations in two cities in Sweden, as well as in India. As of October 1, the cloud company is part of TeliaSonera’s Swedish subsidiary, systems integrator Cygate’s operations.

Meanwhile it has also been announced that Tele2-owned Mobile Norway, which TeliaSonera is also acquiring, has entered into a frequency leasing agreement with Ice Communications Norge (Ice). In December last year, Ice managed to win the biggest share of bands in a spectrum auction. Tele2’s unsuccessful bid in the same auction paved way for the telco to exit the Norwegian market, a move it has since taken by agreeing to sell Mobile Norway to TeliaSonera.

As part of the spectrum leasing agreement, Ice will acquire parts of Tele2’s infrastructure, which will give it a much needed boost. As a fairly small player, Ice has managed to acquire a lot of spectrum but hasn’t got very much infrastructure to anything with it. Therefore the leasing deal with some of Tele2’s infrastructure thrown into the mix acts like a balancing act in the market, which is desperate for more competition.

“This has a very positive impact on the competition on the Norwegian market,” August Baumann, CEO of TeliaSonera Norway said. “It helps to meet the political target according to which there should be three mobile networks in the country, while it also guarantees network access to Tele2’s customers until spring 2015, when the traffic will be switched over to our network.”

TeliaSonera’s acquisition of Mobile Norway was agreed in July for SEK5.1 billion ($687.5 million), and as part of the deal the company committed to 98% 4G population coverage by the end of 2016.