Colt Technology Services has unveiled its plans to expand its optical network in Sydney, Australia, and will provide direct access to around 250 commercial buildings and 20 data centres as the carrier looks to push its way further into Asia Pacific.
While this announcement points to another international player choosing to focus on the Australian market for growth, Colt is not gaining much differentiation from this announcement and needs to increase its messaging to make an impact on an already crowded market. Has Colt left this announcement too late to gain any immediate traction in the market?
Colt will offer own network services
Colt announced that it will offer its own network services, such as Dark Fiber, Wave, Ethernet, IP Access, Dedicated Cloud Access, On-Demand, IPVPN, and SD-WAN across the Sydney central business district with speeds of up to 400Gbps, and international connectivity up to 10Gbps with the hope of having around 300 global customers will benefit from the infrastructure.
The Asia Pacific Region continues to be in strong demand with more carriers looking to increase its presence and capabilities in the region. GlobalData predicts the B2B network market in Asia Pacific to grow by 9.8% CAGR by 2027.
Colt looks to capitalise on the strong networking growth as it looks to expand its business into Asia as part of its global growth strategy.
In June 2024, Colt announced its global growth strategy which included the expansion into six Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam) with its global partners to support business growth of Singapore and global companies. The carrier announced it would offer competitively priced Ethernet and IP access services with improved end-to-end customer experience and similar service level agreements (SLAs) as the company’s own fibre.
To date, the global digital infrastructure company has been using other local service providers to provide local access and support services in Sydney. While Colt announced that it would be using its global partner ecosystem to extend coverage into Southeast Asia, the company hasn’t provided any additional information about the partners it would be using in the region.
Focus on the Australian market
Colt has been focusing on the Australian market for more than a decade. Back in 2019, the carrier announced it was looking to beef up its presence in APAC, launching its IQ Network in Sydney offering ethernet services.
However, the Colt brand is relatively unknown in the Australian market. The carrier made the announcement of the Sydney expansion only days before it will start to promote these new services.
With the long sales cycle in the enterprise segment, the carrier may need to think outside the traditional mobile network codes and should look to establish itself as a wholesale vendor that has vast network capabilities, including that of its iQ network and its global network reach to rival global carriers and other NaaS providers.
The company should also look to highlight its traction in the local market in addition to its capabilities, partnerships, and innovative solutions through brand awareness to differentiate itself from an already crowded market.
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