Infrastructure
| Sector | Infrastructure |
| Sub-sector | Digital infrastructure |
| Location | Australia |
Macquarie Asset Management's (MAM's) approach of investing in critical and essential infrastructure that supports the evolving needs of our communities led them to become an early investor in data centres and recognise the need for investment in fibre networks.
Fibre networks are the backbone of the digital ecosystem, enabling vast amounts of information to be transmitted quickly, securely and reliably across both urban and rural regions.
A MAM-managed fund and its co-investors acquired fibre and network solutions provider Vocus in 2021. They identified the opportunity to build on its inter-capital and regional fibre footprint through a combination with TPG Telecom’s complementary metropolitan fibre footprint. The combined business would create a key digital infrastructure challenger that could benefit more customers across Australia.
The combined business operates a network of more than 50,000km of owned or leased fibre under long-term right of use arrangements, nearly 15,000km of international submarine cables, and close to 20,000 connected enterprise buildings.1 The agreement included TPG’s fibre network infrastructure, EG&W fixed customer base, IT assets, and Vision Network – a wholly owned subsidiary of TPG operating a wholesale last-mile residential broadband business.
Further, under the agreement, Vocus and TPG entered a long-term strategic partnership providing TPG with ongoing access to Vocus’ fibre infrastructure, delivering enduring network planning and access certainty for TPG’s remaining consumer business.
Outcome
With its enhanced network, the merged business can provide an end-to-end service for a larger number of customers across all segments, providing the connectivity critical for a vast country like Australia, while also driving competition in the telecommunications sector.
With greater scale, the merged business has also increased its role in connecting Australia to the rest of the world, broadening links into the US and other parts of the globe.
The agreement builds on the 2022 merger of Vocus’ New Zealand operations with 2degrees, which successfully created New Zealand’s third-largest integrated telecommunications company3 and has driven competition in that market.
of owned or leased fibre under long-term right of use arrangements
as a key digital infrastructure operator in Australia
in Australia’s telecommunications sector
This is a transformative moment for Vocus and customers, creating greater coverage of its fibre networks in Australia. Working through the separation of the TPG assets and planning their integration into the Vocus network has been detailed and complex. MAM has been able to leverage its deep digital expertise to help take Vocus’ network capability and customer proposition to the next level.
Our investment in fibre, following our early move in data centres, is an example of our approach of not just looking at a single asset, but examining the broader ecosystem it is part of.”
Ani Satchcroft
Co-Head of Infrastructure for Asia Pacific
Macquarie Asset Management
