By Todd R. Weiss

Thirty-one AT&T colocation data centers will now be owned and operated by Evoque Data Center Solutions under a $1.1 billion asset sale and alliance deal that AT&T has finalized with Brookfield Infrastructure.

But instead of walking away from the business, AT&T will continue to offer related colocation data-center services to customers using the facilities now owned by Evoque, which Brookfield owns. The completion of the alliance deal, which was unveiled in June of 2018, was finalized and announced this week.

Brookfield created Evoque to own and operate the data centers and services. All customer contracts, fixed assets, leases, facilities and employees under AT&T’s operation of the data centers have been transferred to Brookfield, the companies said.

Under the finalized deal, Evoque will be a part of AT&T’s global colocation ecosystem program of some 350 data centers and the carrier will offer Evoque’s colocation services to business customers.

Brookfield paid $1.1 billion for the data centers and related assets, which AT&T said will be used to help reduce its debt.

The Brookfield-AT&T alliance unveiled last June provides colocation services to customers in 18 internet data centers (IDCs) in the United States and 13 outside the U.S., supporting a diverse customer base of more than 1,000 companies across the technology, financial, industrial, media retail and other sectors worldwide.

AT&T will continue to deliver network services to its customers at the Evoque data centers and will become an active sales channel and the anchor tenant of the colocation operations under the alliance, the companies said.

Evoque’s Tim Caulfield

Brookfield, which owns and manages infrastructure assets around the world, has more than $75 billion in assets under management across the communications infrastructure, utilities, transport, energy, renewable power and sustainable resources sectors.

Tim Caulfield has been named CEO of Evoque. Caulfield is the CEO of ANTARA Group, an IT management consultancy focused on the internet as a service.

AT&T’s move follows the lead of fellow communications giants Verizon, CenturyLink and Windstream, to name a few, who have decided in the past couple of years to phase out of data-center management.