Liberty Global, the owner of Virgin Media, Sunrise-UPC and UPC, has agreed a new joint venture with fund manager Digital Colony, to create AtlasEdge Data Centres. The new data centre operator will have over 100 data centres across Europe, with Liberty Global group companies as anchor tenants and remaining vacant data hall space to be offered for colocation.
The announcement follows a trend for telecoms operators to divest their data centre assets via sale and leaseback agreements. In the past few years, Verizon, AT&T, Centurylink, Telefonica, Bell Canada Enterprises and Windstream have either spawned new colo operators including Cyxtera, Nabiax and Evoque, or expanded the portfolios of existing operators such as Equinix.
AtlasEdge will be led by former Interxion CFO and Digital Colony partner, Josh Joshi. The focus of the company is to take advantage of its network position to promote its facilities for Edge data centre use.
The deal is expected to complete in Q3 2021.
