By Business & Finance 
Stephen O’Reilly, sales manager, SAS Ireland and Colm Piercy, founder and Group CEO of Digiweb Group, which now owns Viatel
Viatel, the pan-European full-service telecommunications operator, which is part of the Digiweb Group, recently announced that it is set to invest €125m in a major expansion.
Over the coming year, Viatel will invest in extending its fibre infrastructure, cloud services and data centres, and is hoping to deliver on a number of acquisitions, supported by newly announced funding partner, Proventus Capital Partners.
“This is an exciting time for Viatel,” company CEO, Colm Piercy, said at the announcement on August 19th. “While we already connect 150 data centres and thousands of multinational enterprises and organisations across Western Europe, this investment will now enable us to enhance our services and to extend our reach further and deeper within Europe, and to connect new locations in the US, Canada, the Middle East and Asia.”
Already one of the largest owners of transcontinental duct and fibre across Europe, Viatel also offer a wide portfolio of voice and managed services, and operate an extensive data centre estate.
The company is working on a pipeline of prospective acquisitions which will secure Viatel’s position as a leading unified services and infrastructure competitor, guaranteeing real disruption for the sector through better pricing and improved services to customers.
“Proventus Capital Partners is committed to working with dynamic and growth oriented businesses throughout Europe,” Henrik Bjerklin, investment director with Proventus Capital Partners explained. “In Viatel, we have found an exciting mix of opportunity and capability and we look forward to working closely with management to develop the company’s true potential.”
Viatel is now expanding its sales, technical and product development and delivery teams in London, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. “Our new partnership with Proventus will enable Viatel to greatly accelerate our growth and to transform the European telecommunications sector into the future,” added Piercy.
Viatel also announced in April a major network upgrade throughout Ireland with1500km of network being upgraded. “This network upgrade quadruples the capacity available from Viatel and is a clear response by the company to continue our investment programme across all the markets that we operate in,” Piercy said.
“This €1.5m upgrade will benefit all our customers throughout Ireland as well as our European customers taking connectivity solutions to support their Irish sites.
“Our customers have an ever increasing need for faster and more secure connectivity, new and existing Viatel customers will benefit from the availability of increased bandwidth. This network upgrade will also allow Viatel to continue to develop our range of flexible services,” he concluded.
About the CEO
Colm Piercy is founder and group CEO of Digiweb Group – a pan-European telecoms and managed services provider. Previously he lectured at the University of Limerick and led enterprise development and R&D initiatives at Dundalk Institute of Technology before leaving to establish Digiweb. Digiweb Group recently acquired Viatel. The Viatel advanced fibre optic backbone network connects eight countries, 35 main cities and over 120 European data centres.
In 2012, Piercy was the winner of the Ernst & Young Industry Entrepreneur of the Year.
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