Liberty Global, one of the world’s leading converged video, broadband and communications companies, and Digital Colony, a leading global investment firm, recently announced the creation of AtlasEdge Data Centres, a European Edge data center business.
AtlasEdge will deliver services via an extensive network of facilities located close to consumer and enterprise end users, the 'edge' of the network. The company aims to serve the growing demand from cloud providers, streaming services and enterprises for high-performance, scalable and secure facilities through which they can distribute low-latency applications and services such as 5G, gaming, IOT and edge compute.
Liberty Global will contribute digital infrastructure assets, including its technical real estate portfolios, at levels consistent with European digital infrastructure valuations, highlighting the strong underlying value embedded in its businesses. Liberty Global will also provide strategic and operational support to the business. Digital Colony will provide operating expertise, strategic direction and capital to support the significant growth and consolidation opportunity in edge co-location services across Europe.
AtlasEdge will be supported by anchor tenancies from Liberty Global operating companies in four European countries: Virgin Media in the UK and in Ireland, Sunrise-UPC in Switzerland and UPC in Poland. With unprecedented local reach into consumers and businesses, AtlasEdge will provide infrastructure services to third parties at the edge with a focus on performance, low-latency, scalability, and quality of experience.
Mike Fries, CEO, Liberty Global
The proposed joint venture presents significant growth opportunities as we look to build this business into a leading European edge data center operator. Furthermore, since several of our operating companies will become anchor tenants, Liberty Global customers will also benefit from better and more responsive services.
Marc Ganzi, President and CEO of Colony Capital and CEO, Digital Colony
The proposed joint venture will unlock the growth potential of Liberty’s digital real estate holdings and capitalize on the emerging demand we are seeing for edge compute across Europe. It’s an opportunity for us to apply the entire Digital Colony value-add playbook, leveraging our operating expertise, strategic M&A capabilities, and access to institutional capital in partnership with a world-class organization like Liberty Global.
