In November, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo furiously denied that the carrier was interested in selling its data centers and co-location assets. But according to Reuters yesterday, Verizon has indeed started shopping its data centers around, with a possible sales price of $2.5 billion.

The deal would not include the enterprise business of the former MCI, which, according to Reuters, Verizon has tried unsuccessfully to sell.

The assets consist of 48 data centers garnered in Verizon's 2011 acquisition of Terremark for $1.4 billion.

At the time, that move was considered a bold entry into cloud services, but the new trend is for carriers to back away from that business, thanks partly to the dominance of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the public cloud market.

If Verizon does sell its data centers, it would follow in the footsteps of Centurylink, which divested its co-location business last year. In a similar move, AT&T sold its managed hosting business to IBM in December.