DENVER—Liberty Global is setting up a joint venture with the digital infrastructure investment firm Digital Colony to launch AtlasEdge Data Centres with plans to create an European edge infrastructure platform with over 100 active edge facilities.
The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2021, at which time Josh Joshi will become the executive chairman of the AtlasEdge board of directors.
The creation of the proposed joint venture will be subject to regulatory approvals.
AtlasEdge will deliver services via an extensive network of facilities located close to consumer and enterprise end users at the “edge” of the network.
The company hopes to tap into the growing demand from cloud providers, streaming services and enterprises for high-performance facilities that can be used to distribute low-latency applications and services such as 5G, gaming, IOT and edge compute.
“The proposed joint venture presents significant growth opportunities as we look to build this business into a leading European edge data center operator,” explained Mike Fries, CEO, Liberty Global, in a statement. “Furthermore, since several of our operating companies will become anchor tenants, Liberty Global customers will also benefit from better and more responsive services.”
Liberty Global is one of the world’s leading video, broadband and communications companies, with operations in seven European countries under the consumer brands Virgin Media, Telenet, UPC, the combined Sunrise UPC, as well as VodafoneZiggo, which is owned through a 50/50 joint venture.
It will contribute digital infrastructure assets, including its technical real estate portfolios and provide strategic and operational support to the business.
Digital Colony will provide operating expertise, strategic direction and capital. Digital Colony manages a $32 billion portfolio of digital infrastructure assets on behalf of its shareholders and limited partners.
