Colt Technology Services


Colt Technology Services Group Limited is a multinational telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until it was acquired by Fidelity Investments in August 2015.

History

Colt was founded in 1992 by Jim Hynes with funds provided by Fidelity Investments as City Of London Telecommunications. The company began to construct a telecoms network in London. In 1993 it was awarded a licence to compete with British Telecom and Cable and Wireless in voice and data transmission. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996. The group later expanded into Europe, building networks in major European cities over the next 10 years. In 2001 Fidelity helped the Company to raise a further £400m to finance its future activities. In 2005 the company reached its first year of positive cash flow, and in 2007 its first year of profit. In April 2009 Colt completed an Open Offer raising €199.1m before expenses with the issue of 211.0 million shares. In 2010 Colt rebranded from COLT Telecom to Colt Technology Services, deleting the acronym City of London Telecommunications to reflect its pan-European nature. In May 2011 Colt acquired a majority shareholding in MarketPrizm, a provider of low latency market data and trading infrastructure services.
On 12 November 2014, Colt acquired KVH, a Japanese Telecom service provider, helping Colt to expand its capability in the growing Asian market.
In August 2015 the company was acquired by Fidelity Investments.

Operations

Colt has offices in 22 European countries, the US, India and Asia, with the company's network reaching 51 metro areas globally. The parent company's main centre of operations is based in the United Kingdom. Colt is organised as follows:

Network Services

Colt network services are “focused particularly on selected network intensive market segments: capital markets, media, cloud service providers and fixed and mobile network operators”.

Voice Services

Colt sells voice services that support “transition from traditional to next-generation voice services with a particular focus on Enterprise Voice, including IN services and IP Voice opportunities”.