Telecoms group GTT emerges from Chapter 11

US managed services and cloud connectivity provider GTT, formerly called Global Telecom and Technology, has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after more than two years of corporate and financial restructuring.

The company, which maintains ethernet and IP sites in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, first filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2021.

“Today marks the beginning of an important new chapter for GTT,” CEO Ernie Ortega said in a statement. 

“Over the past two years, we have concentrated relentlessly on transforming our business into a customer-focused, managed services provider with a culture of continuous improvement. As we begin 2023 on a new path, I’m tremendously excited about the opportunities ahead,” he added.

Throughout this period, the company has managed to reduce its debt by around US$2.8bn and bring in new investors.

For example, it sold its infrastructure division to I Squared Capital for US$2.1bn, cutting debt by approximately 80%, according to GTT.

Affiliates managed by Lone Star Funds, Anchorage Capital Group, Fidelity Management & Research Co., and Cheyne Capital, collectively, comprise the new investor leadership and own a majority of GTT’s reorganized equity.

GTT’s managed services portfolio includes Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions, as well as global networking and connectivity solutions. 

The Virginia-based company operates a tier 1 IP network and recently announced a phased 400Gb rollout to address a continued, double-digit increase in customer IP traffic across its core IP network, which connects more than 260 cities on six continents, the company said.

LATIN AMERICA

In October, the company inked a new contract with US interconnection and hyperscale edge datacenter group Cologix to set up a new Point-of-Presence (PoP, or network interconnection points) to serve Latin America.

GTT's PoP was established at Cologix’s JAX1 digital edge datacenter in Jacksonville, Florida, to serve customers in the local metropolitan area and to provide high-speed connectivity to and from Latin America. GTT claims to have over 600 global PoPs worldwide.

JAX1 provides access to two submarine cable systems to Latin America: America Movil Submarine Cable System-1 (AMX-1) and Pacific Caribbean Cable System (PCCS).

The former is a 17,500km system launched in 2014 that connects Florida to Barranquilla, Cartagena and Schooner Bight (Colombia), Fortaleza, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Puerto Plata (Dominican Republic), Cancún (Mexico), San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Puerto Barrios (Guatemala).

In November, América Móvil said it invested US$500mn to extend AMX-1 to Costa Rica via a landing station in Limón.

Meanwhile, PCCS went live in 2015 and is a 6,500km system linking Florida to Hudishibana (Aruba), Cartagena, Mahuma (Curaçao), Manta (Ecuador), Balboa and Maria Chiquita (Panama), San Juan, and Tortola (UK Virgin Islands).

Guayaquil-based firm Cable Andino is the owner of PCCS together with Telxius, C&W and Aruba's SETAR. Telconet and DRG also worked together during the construction of PCCS, which, like AMX-1, was manufactured by Nokia's ASN.