Equinix today inked a deal to acquire 13 data center sites from Canada's BCE Inc. for $750 million. The colocation giant said the sites represent a total of 25 data center facilities that are expected to generate about $105 million in revenue on an annual basis.

Equinix will gain more than 500 new customers via the BCE acquisition, including large publicly-traded companies in tech, government, and financial services, according to the company. About 100 of BCE’s customers were already working with Equinix. 

“It enables us to expand our presence in the Americas and strengthens relationships with Canadian enterprises, many of which prefer local credentials and have multi-metro requirements,” Jon Lin, president of the Americas at Equinix, told SDxCentral. The company’s expansion in Canada will also increase interconnection within and between Canada and the rest of the world, riding on the addition of seven new metros in six provinces that are also designed to extend edge computing capabilities, he explained. 

Equinix claims the deal will make it a market leader in data center and interconnection services in Canada. It will gain new capacity in Toronto where Equinix already operates two data centers and extend interconnection services to the metro areas of Calgary, Kamloops, Vancouver, Millidgeville, Montreal, Ottawa, and Winnipeg. 

In total, the 13 data centers, six of which included owned assets, will add about 1.2 million square feet of data center space and 400,000 square feet of colocation space, according to Equinix. The company also plans to eventually bring its Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) to all of the 13 data centers.

Following the close of the all-cash transaction, which is expected to occur before the end of 2020, Equinix will have 62 locations, including 27 in the Americas, 22 in Europe and the Middle East, and 13 in the Asia-Pacific region.

The deal follows a flurry of activity for Equinix aimed at bolstering its hyperscale strategy and expanding capabilities in edge computing. The company acquired bare-metal cloud startup Packet for $335 million in January 2020, and more recently snagged a second $1 billion-plus joint venture with Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC to develop and operate hyperscale data centers in Japan. Equinix also paid $175 million in October 2019 to acquire three Axtel data centers in Mexico.