SEACOM announces strategic acquisition of FibreCo Telecommunications

Issued by Clockwork Media for SEACOM
Johannesburg, 20 Nov 2018

Pan-African telecommunications service provider, SEACOM, announced the conclusion of a sale agreement for the 100% acquisition of FibreCo Telecommunications by its affiliate SEACOM South Africa.

FibreCo owns and operates a national open access dark fibre network, providing infrastructure, connectivity and services across South Africa. The acquisition is subject to approval by the South African Competition Commission.

This acquisition represents another major milestone towards SEACOM achieving its vision to expand its African footprint through the consolidation of fibre assets. SEACOM believes this is necessary for the evolution of the market, particularly as we move into the 5G environment with its requirement for pervasive fibre networks.

SEACOM connects South Africa to the east coast of Africa, India and Europe, and FibreCo connects over 60 points of presence across South Africa, including major data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London. FibreCo's network also connects the SEACOM subsea cable system (which lands in Mtunzini on the east coast of South Africa) to the WACS cable (which lands at Yzerfontein, on the west coast of South Africa), enabling fully redundant, high-speed ring protection for diversity around the African continent.

The FibreCo acquisition significantly strengthens SEACOM's operations in South Africa by creating a platform for the expansion of its business services. It enables the delivery of high-speed Internet connectivity and cloud products into smaller cities and towns across the country, which have typically been under-serviced.

FibreCo's current shareholders believe they have met the original intent behind starting the business in 2009, namely, to successfully transform South Africa's long-haul bandwidth transmission landscape. The acquisition will allow SEACOM the opportunity to further invest in and grow the business, establishing SEACOM as a leader in bridging South Africa's digital divide and strongly positioning the country to be a key player in the fourth industrial revolution.

SEACOM

SEACOM launched Africa's first broadband submarine cable system along the eastern and southern coastlines in 2009, bringing with it a vast supply of high quality and affordable Internet bandwidth.

Since then, SEACOM has moved beyond being a cable operator to become a major pan-African service provider, offering a full suite of resilient and scalable data services that allow Africa's growing ICT community to develop and evolve.

Ranging from dedicated IPL transmission services and flexible Ethernet services, to resilient IP transit service capabilities and accessible Internet connectivity, SEACOM can now provide tailor-made communication solutions.

SEACOM is privately owned and operated, allowing the company the agility to rapidly deploy new services, commercial structures and infrastructure in response to customer requirements. SEACOM is also able to provide true open access services with no red tape or hidden costs.

SEACOM's customer-driven services are bringing affordable data connectivity and all of its benefits to Africa's people.

For more information, visit www.seacom.mu.

FibreCo

In partnership with its clients, FibreCo provides bespoke connectivity solutions across South Africa and metro areas, ranging from fibre ownership to high capacity and complex managed networking solutions in support of wholesale and enterprise clients. This allows clients to realise the benefits of the massive scalability inherent in high-quality, ultra-fast fibre-optic networks at a fraction of the cost of deploying such infrastructure nationally.

Since inception in 2009, FibreCo's mission has been to provide direct access to infrastructure in order to lower the cost of connectivity for its clients. FibreCo has stayed true to this mission and remains a national, truly open access infrastructure and connectivity provider to enterprise, government and carrier clients.

Through its open access pricing model, FibreCo effectively transfers the significant economies of scale inherent in fibre-optic networking technologies to its customers, paving the way for lower broadband access costs for end-users, improved communications service quality, enhanced regional connectivity, innovation and enabling customers their desired speed of market deployment.

FibreCo builds its own infrastructure and leverages already available fibre networks and other relationships to provide the most efficient connectivity solution, while offering end-to-end SLAs, monitoring and maintenance services throughout the network on a 24/7 basis.

FibreCo strengthens the existing telecommunications networks in the country, offering diverse routes, which in turn enhance the country's ability to leverage advances in ICTs.

The current shareholders of FibreCo were collectively advised by Investec Corporate Finance.

For more information on FibreCo, visit: www.fibreco.co.za.

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