Openface, a Canadian Internet service provider for businesses, has bought IT infrastructure provider Zerofail, making the combined company one of the largest fiber and internet infrastructure providers in Montreal, and adding wireless connectivity in Montreal and Toronto.
Openface provides fast internet and private networks specifically for business customers. In recent years, it has been building up its physical fiber optic network in Montreal to provide customers up to 10 Gigabits per second speeds.
Zerofail is also one of the fastest Internet service for businesses.
The merging of these companies will undoubtedly challenge incumbent internet providers like Bell and Rogers for their business customers.
Openface and Zerofail are also some of the most interconnected network providers in Canada. This is important because fiber networks on their own aren’t able to talk to customers on other networks without exchanging traffic between the networks. These networks meet up to exchange traffic at data centers like TORIX (Toronto Internet Exchange) and the QIX (Quebec Internet Exchange) in Montreal. More interconnections are better, and Zerofail is the sixth most interconnected company out of 1842 providers and Openface also ranks highly.
Openface will also gain high-profile Zerofail customers including Air Canada Cargo, Avis-Budget, Christian Dior, the Department of Defense, and Rolls Royce.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.