American Tower, the world’s largest owner of wireless infrastructure, has made an entry into the data center sector. The wireless infrastructure owner and operator bought Colo Atl, a colocation and meet-me room business in downtown Atlanta. This is American Tower’s first data center purchase.
Timothy A Kiser, a 25-year industry veteran owns and operates Colo Alt. Kiser told Data Center Frontier, “I think it’s a triple win. This works well for us, provides American Tower with an opportunity to get into a new vertical, and it’s a win for our tenants because they’ll have more business opportunities.”
Established in 2001, Colo Atl operates a colocation space and meet-me room in downtown Atlanta. The area spans 1,470 square feet on the 5th Floor and 16,034 square feet on the 8th Floor in one of the South’s premier carrier hotels, 55 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Georgia. The company is a provider of enterprise and carrier-neutral colocation, data center and interconnection services. Colo Alt developed the carrier-neutral colocation space to allow tenants to cross-connect within the space, allowing companies to establish a presence to network with other carriers within the building.
According to Data Center Frontier’s Rich Miller, Kiser and his team will continue under American Tower’s ownership. “They don’t want to change anything, other than that they want to grow the product. American Tower has a lot of relationships with folks who may want to colocate here with us. From a marketing perspective, they can have a bigger outreach,” said Kiser. Colo Alt informed that John Ghirardelli, Director of American Tower and new General Manager of Colo Atl would oversee and manage operations alongside Tim and Jim Leifer, Sr. Manager Broadcast Operations of American Tower.
American Tower Corporation is one of the largest global real estate investment trusts and a leading owner, operator, and developer of multitenant communications real estate. The company operates more than 170,000 wireless infrastructure sites across 17 countries on five continents. This includes approximately 41,000 properties in the United States and approximately 130,000 properties internationally. The company also registered more than $7.3 billion in revenue in 2018.
