STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - U.S. communications infrastructure provider Zayo Group on Monday said it has launched the Zeus subsea route connecting the UK and continental Europe as cloud service providers seek faster internet connection.
Undersea cables transmit nearly all the world's internet data traffic, and many technology companies, including Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)'s Google and Meta have also invested in building their own subsea cables.
Zayo, which was bought by investment firms Digital Colony Partners LP and EQT for about $8.2 billion in 2019, owns several terrestrial fibre routes in the UK, Ireland and several European countries.
The new subsea cable, which was announced last year, will have access points in Lowestoft, U.K. and Zandvoort, the Netherlands.
"From a data center standpoint, London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt for us are the most critical routes, so that's why we decided to go first with that one," Yannick Leboyer, Zayo's chief operating officer for Europe, said in an interview.
"It's probably the riskiest investment we have done in Europe in many years," he said. "When we kicked this off there were no customers, but now we have customers."
Zayo did not give details of its investment.