March 01, 2019

SEACOM acquires FibreCo with Competition Commission approval

Pan-African communications provider SEACOM today formally announced the completion of the 100% acquisition of FibreCo Telecommunications, including the approval by the Competition Commission. FibreCo owns and operates a national fibre network providing infrastructure and connectivity services across South Africa. The acquisition was made through SEACOM’s affiliate SEACOM South Africa.

FibreCo’s network runs along South Africa’s highest-traffic transmission routes and links all major South Africa cities. With the acquisition of FibreCo, SEACOM completes its “African Ring” by connecting its East and West coast submarine assets with a robust network of trans-South African fibre.

SEACOM CEO, Byron Clatterbuck, says ”This acquisition reaffirms SEACOM as the provider of choice to local and international data communications customers by expanding its wholesale portfolio to include dark-fibre infrastructure services in the metro and long-distance marketplace. We also plan to “light-up” the FibreCo national infrastructure, enabling SEACOM to deliver affordable, high speed-internet connectivity and cloud services to bandwidth-starved cities and towns along our new fibre routes. FibreCo’s customers will continue to experience the same high levels of service to which they are accustomed, with the added benefit that SEACOM will make further investment into the network to expand its portfolio of services.”

"100% acquisition of FibreCo Telecommunications"

Adds Chief Development Officer, Suveer Ramdhani: “This transaction forms part of SEACOM’s greater growth strategy, which has included several ISP acquisitions, including most recently MacroLan and SAI. While these previous transactions built up both our regional capability and our footprint of on-net buildings in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, the FibreCo network serves as a platform for SEACOM’s enterprise strategy to be extended to the rest of South Africa.”.

Through its continent-spanning fibre optic submarine cable system, SEACOM connects South Africa to the east coast of Africa, India and Europe and will now, through its affiliate SEACOM South Africa, connect over 60 points of presence across South Africa,including major data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London with 4,000km of owned intercity and metropolitan fibre. The SEACOM South Africa network connects the SEACOM subsea cable system, which lands in Mtunzini on the South Africa east coast, to the WACS cable, which lands at Yzerfontein, on the country’s west coast.