BT Group has completed the sale of its Irish wholesale and enterprise business unit to Cordiant subsidiary Speed Fibre Group for €22 million ($25.8m).

First announced in February, the deal has been cleared by Irish regulators.

The sale of BT Communications Ireland (BTCIL) will include BT’s domestic network infrastructure, more than 400 customers, and associated teams supporting the wholesale and business enterprises.

It will not include BTCIL’s multinational customer base, large Irish organizations, the Emergency Call Answering Service, associated employees, and the recently divested data center business.

The telco giant will still operate in the Irish market, providing connectivity, cloud, and security services to multinationals and large organizations.

BT notes that it has more than 300 colleagues in Ireland, based in Dublin and throughout the region.

As part of the deal, a long-term agreement between BT and Speed Fibre Group to source connectivity for their respective customers from each other has been signed.

“We are delighted to conclude this successful transaction, which represents the next step in our strategy to become a more agile and focused business," said Bas Burger, CEO of BT International. "We will continue to invest in this important market for our multinational customers to provide them with secure multi-cloud connectivity and deliver on our purpose to connect for good.”

Cordiant owns Speed Fibre Group, which includes Enet and the broadband provider Magnet Plus. Speed Fibre Group primarily invests in the core infrastructure of the digital economy - data centers, fiber optic networks, and telecommunication and broadcast towers in Europe and North America.

"Uniting BTCIL and Speed Fibre Group combines market heritage, knowledge, and scale, and also restores badly needed competition in the telecommunications space at a national level," said Peter McCarthy, CEO of Speed Fibre Group.

"By bringing together two leaders in the market, we will unlock greater scale, deeper building connectivity, and the ability to offer customers nationwide increased choice, better value, expanded reach, and service excellence."

The company's footprint spans nearly 10,000km of fiber and more than 6,000 connected buildings nationwide, including more than 2,500 in Dublin and key urban centers.

Founded in 1990, BT Ireland was originally called Esat Telecom, said to be an abbreviation of "Éireann Satellite." BT has been interested in a sale of its Irish unit for some time, with BT CEO Allison Kirkby reigniting plans to sell the unit last year, four years after her predecessor, Philip Jansen, scrapped a deal.

In June, BT announced the launch of a dedicated standalone international business unit.

The company's push to create a standalone unit is no surprise. BT CEO Allison Kirkby has set out to focus on BT's domestic telecoms and broadband opportunities, as the business looks to streamline. In April, the company agreed to sell its Italian unit to Retelit.

Kirkby outlined plans last year to save a further £3 billion ($4.06bn) in costs by the end of 2029.

Part of her turnaround strategy has been to focus heavily on the company's home market in the UK.

Just before Christmas, BT also agreed to sell its Irish data center business to Equinix for €59m ($69m).