Superloop acquires telecommunication infrastructure provider SubPartners

Superloop has acquired telecommunication infrastructure provider SubPartners for $3.3 million (US$2.5 million).

The company will seek shareholder approval to issue shares to Superloop chief executive Bevan Slattery. If approved, Slattery's holding in Superloop will be 29.1 percent; if not, he will be paid US$2 million.

Brisbane-based SubPartners will offer Superloop strategic assets including the ownership of international submarine cable capacity as a member of the Indigo consortium.

The Indigo consortium is an agreement with Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build a new international subsea cable system that will connect Singapore, Indonesia and Australia. The agreement is between SubPartners, AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel and Telstra.

Indigo is building the Indigo West Cable, which will connect Singapore to Perth, and the Indigo Central cable, which will connect Perth to Sydney.

The Indigo cable system is expected to be completed by mid-2019, which will result in Superloop having access to dedicated fibre spectrum capable of supporting initial capacity of at least 4.5 terabits per second.

Slattery said: "We are very excited by the prospect of offering customers a fully meshed pan-Asian network, connecting the existing metropolitan networks which we own and operate. Once the cables are complete, we will have even more capacity to meet growing customer demand across the region."

The acquisition of SubPartners will also offer Superloop the ability to swap capacity for access to other international cable systems, opening up access to new markets and customers.

According to Superloop, it will be able to expand its cable capacity independently of the other consortium members.

Superloop was founded in 2014 by Bevan Slattery, who spun off the network infrastructure assets from his virtual connection venture, Megaport. Slattery also founded NextDC, Pipe Networks, and Cloudscene.

The company struck a major deal by acquiring wireless network and IT services provider BigAir last year, opening up a new player in the battle for super-fast internet connections for enterprises. The deal brought Superloop more than 2200 customers, over 300 points of presence in Australia, new data centre locations and additional installed fibre.

In 2015, Superloop forked out $5.8 million to acquire Brisbane-based network services wholesaler APEX Networks, and another $3 million the following month to buy Adelaide-based high-speed networks provider Cinenet Systems.

Superloop reported revenues of $8.8 million in the first half of the 2017 financial year ending 31 December 2016, up from $1.9 million the previous half-year. The company made a net loss of $2 million.