IRISH-OWNED TELECOMS COMPANY Viatel, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digiweb, will sell all its operations outside the Republic for €95 million.

Publicly-listed US cable and data firm Zayo, which has a market value of about $5.6 billion (€5.2 billion), today announced it was buying the smaller company’s cable networks and data centres across eight countries in Europe.

Viatel was founded in 1991 and in 2013 it merged with the Digiweb Group, which also controls broadband provider Digiweb and web hosting company Host.ie among other Irish businesses.

Zayo will take over Viatel’s 8,400km network of fibre cables, including undersea data links between the British capital and both Amsterdam and Paris, as part of the agreement. The deal will not affect any of its existing operations in Ireland.

Digiweb Group founder and CEO Colm Piercy said Viatel would “continue to offer leading voice, data and hosting solutions in Ireland” after the transaction.

Piercy’s Dundalk-based company was formed in 1997 and in recent years it has gone on a shopping spree, taking over 10 other companies.

Last year Viatel took on €125 million in investment to expand its global operations with revenues at the company predicted to hit €100 million before the end of 2014.

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