Canadian telecoms firm Rogers has sold off its data center unit.

Infrastructure asset manager InfraRed Capital Partners this week announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Rogers Communications’ data center business, on behalf of InfraRed’s value-add strategy.

Terms of the deal weren’t shared. The transaction is expected to complete by the end of the year. Rogers intends to use the net proceeds from the transaction to repay debt.

Rogers’ Business data center portfolio totals nine Tier II and III-quality facilities across key Canadian cities, totaling up to 49MW of capacity. The telco noted the deal does not include its corporate data centers used for the company’s network and IT purposes.

Rogers said it will continue to sell data center services on behalf of InfraRed and will provide network connectivity to the facilities.

Pilar Banegas, partner, InfraRed, said: “This investment represents an exciting opportunity for us to drive value in an established business, capitalising on the rising demand for secure and reliable data centre services, within one of the most attractive segments of the Canadian digital infrastructure market.

He continued: “We will leverage our knowledge of the market and our deep data centre experience, built from investments such as Nexspace, our European data centre platform, to help realise its potential. Furthermore, we can also draw on our owner Sun Life’s significant presence in Canada to inform our approach.”

Part of SLC Management, the institutional alternatives and traditional asset management business of Sun Life, InfraRed is a mid-market infrastructure asset manager controlling $13bn of equity capital. Its previous investments include Vodafone NZ's tower infrastructure, Proximus' Luxembourg towers, and European data center firm Nexspace. It is also handling the wind-down of Triple Point's D9 fund.

The sale concludes a year-long process. Reports that Rogers was considering the sale of nine of its data centers surfaced back in March 2024. The company confirmed it was looking to offload its data centers as part of an initiative to raise C$1 billion (US$729m) through “asset sales, predominantly from real estate,” in April 2024.

In April of this year, Rogers separately struck a deal to sell a 49.9 percent stake in its wireless network infrastructure to Blackstone for CA$7 billion (US$4.9bn).