French telco group Iliad aims to invest billions of Euros into its OpCore data center unit.
As part of its Q1 2024 results, the company outlined plans to expand its OpCore data center business over the next decade.
Iliad said it aims to invest €2.5 billion ($2.71bn) in organic developments, supported by Iliad and a future financial partner. The company also hinted that it would invest in “opportunistic M&A.”
“Iliad's ambition, in terms of data centers, is the size of Europe,” Thomas Reynaud, Iliad CEO, said during the presentation of the results.
OpCore was formed last year after Iliad separated its data center business from its Scaleway cloud unit. According to the report, the company has six data centers across Paris, one each in Lyon and Marseille, and seven in Poland. The portfolio totals around 131MW, including in-development projects
Customers of the sites are named as several hyperscalers and more than 150 ‘blue-chip B2B customers,’ along with Iliad’s Free, Play, Scaleway, and Kyutai.
The Paris sites were inherited from Scaleway, while the Lyon and Marseille sites were likely inherited from Iliad-owned MSP Jaguar Network (now known as Free Pro). The Polish sites were taken from Iliad’s Play/3S units.
Reports that Iliad was looking for an investment partner for OpCore surfaced earlier this year. The company is said to be offering a minority stake in 14 of 15 OpCore data centers – reportedly eight in France and seven in Poland – but wants to retain overall control.
Iliad’s Irish telco Eir also operates two data centers in Dublin that are seemingly not part of OpCore or this investment.
Scaleway – formerly Online SAS/Online.net – was founded as a hosting company in 1999. The company launched a colocation division after acquiring Alice ADSL from Telecom Italia’s French unit in 2008.
The data center unit can trace its roots back to ISDnet in 1999. The company was first bought by Cable & Wireless in 2000, then Tiscali France in 2003. Tiscali’s French operations were then sold to Telecom Italia’s French subsidiary Alice in 2005, before being bought by Iliad three years later.
In the release announcing the results, Reynaud said: “The Group is radically changing scale – from a technological perspective, thanks to our promising investments in the Freebox Ultra, the Cloud, AI, and new data centers, and from a geographical perspective. Having become Tele2’s reference shareholder, we are now present in eight European countries. Forming part of Europe’s top five telcos is within our reach, and as from this year!”
