CityReach Establishes U.S Beachhead

European colocation firm opens Ft. Lauderdale office

By Rich Miller
CarrierHotels News Staff

August 9, 2000 -- CityReach International, the European interconnection and co-location specialist, today announced the opening of its first US office in the greater Fort Lauderdale area.
The company also announced new partnerships with four U.S. companies - Universal Access, Netsentinel, InterNAP and Anixter International - to help its outreach to American customers.
. CityReach is targeting American businesses that want to expand to Europe and need Internet infrastructure – a group including telecom and bandwidth providers, ASPs, ISPs, Web hosters, content providers, Internet data centers and corporations.
The company currently has facilities in major European business capitals including Amsterdam, London, Dublin, Munich, Berlin, Paris and Brussels, and plans to operate in a total of 20 European cities by the close of 2001.
The Amsterdam facility opened earlier this year and the London facility is now accepting tenants. CityReach's proprietary Secure Internet eXchange (SiX™) facilities are stand alone carrier-neutral facilities solely designed to house and maintain sensitive, mission-critical equipment.
"What differentiates CityReach in the marketplace," says chief operating officer Ralph O'Dell "is that we are a true neutral carrier, we don't sell bandwidth, but we do bring a host of carriers to each facility so that interconnection among customers is easy and cost effective.
"Our partnerships with American companies allow CityReach to provide the ultimate in Internet network infrastructure, logistics, routing systems and subscription-based network security programs," O'Dell added.
In a press release announcing its expansion, CityReach said there will be an estimated 148 million Internet users in Europe by 2002 compared with about 72 million today. Externally hosted commercial web sites will grow to almost 1 million by next year, up from only 221,000 sites in 1997.
CityReach International's financial backing includes a $50 million equity investment from Battery Ventures, Chase Capital Partners and M/C Ventures, combined with a senior credit facility of $124 million underwritten by Chase Manhattan and Merrill Lynch.