GTT has purchased Reliance’s North American Yipes Ethernet business for $28 million, bolstering its asset portfolio to better respond to multinational customers' service needs.
While Reliance did not specifically call out GTT, a recent press release said that the service provider sold its Yipes business in North America. According to a Reliance financial filing (PDF), the service provider confirmed that it sold the assets to GTT.
Reliance noted in its filing that the Ethernet Division contributed revenue of $38.9 million in revenue, which represented 1.2% of consolidated revenue during the 2015-2016 fiscal year. GTT did not respond to FierceTelecom’s request for comment.
News of Reliance selling the Yipes assets should be of no great surprise.
After purchasing Yipes’ Ethernet business for $300 million in 2007, Reliance combined the assets with the Flag submarine cable business and later Vanco’s virtual network operations (VNO) business to create what was eventually called Reliance Globalcom.
A number of reports emerged in recent years that Reliance was looking for a buyer for the Reliance Globalcom assets.
In April 2013 Reliance Communications' move to sell off a large stake of its Globalcom unit fell through as talks with Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco) ended without a deal being struck.
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For GTT, a purchase of the Yipes assets would enable it to further its Ethernet service presence in the United States. The service provider could then tie those assets into its global network to further its bond with multinational business customers looking for other options besides the local ILEC for service.
This is the second acquisition GTT has made in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the service provider purchased Hibernia Networks. By purchasing Hibernia, GTT enhanced its Tier 1 IP network with a set of owned and leased dark fiber assets including five owned subsea cable and eight landing stations.