According to DCD, fiber infrastructure firm Exa Infrastructure announced in late October that it will acquire Conexio doo Beograd’s long-haul duct assets in Serbia. The acquisition includes two high-density polyethylene ducts spanning 860km, existing cables, and 15 points of presence locations, along with the transfer of existing customer contracts. This follows Exa’s recent €1.3 billion ($1.52bn) refinancing and comes weeks after the company confirmed a $48 million agreement to acquire Aqua Comms. Exa currently operates 155,000 kilometers of fiber across 37 countries, including six transatlantic cables, and the Conexio deal integrates with previous acquisitions in Croatia and Bulgaria to create a unified Balkan network. This strategic expansion signals a broader industry trend worth examining.
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The Balkan Digital Corridor Takes Shape
What Exa is building represents more than just another acquisition—it’s creating a strategic digital corridor connecting Western Europe to emerging Eastern markets. The integration of Serbian assets with existing Croatian and Bulgarian networks creates a continuous, homogeneous infrastructure that bypasses traditional routing challenges in the region. This corridor becomes particularly significant given the growing importance of Turkey as both a digital hub and gateway to Middle Eastern and Asian markets. The Balkan route offers alternative connectivity to traditional Mediterranean cable landings, providing redundancy and potentially lower latency for traffic heading eastward.
Infrastructure Consolidation Accelerates
Exa’s acquisition spree—from Unitel in Croatia to GCN in Bulgaria and now Conexio in Serbia—reflects a broader industry trend toward regional consolidation. Smaller national providers are being absorbed by larger pan-European players who can leverage scale and capital efficiency. This mirrors similar consolidation patterns we’ve seen in North American fiber markets, where regional players struggle to compete against the investment capacity of infrastructure funds and telecom giants. The recent €1.3 billion refinancing gives Exa substantial firepower to continue this strategy, potentially targeting additional Balkan markets like Romania, North Macedonia, or Albania to complete their regional dominance.
Geopolitical and Economic Implications
The timing of this infrastructure buildout coincides with increased European Union investment in digital connectivity across Southeast Europe. As the EU expands its digital single market initiatives, reliable cross-border infrastructure becomes critical for economic integration. Exa’s network positions it as a key enabler of this vision, potentially qualifying for future EU funding programs aimed at reducing digital divides between member states. Additionally, the unified network creates strategic alternatives to Russian and Chinese infrastructure initiatives in the region, aligning with Western geopolitical interests in maintaining digital sovereignty.
Future Market Outlook
Looking ahead, we can expect increased competition from other infrastructure funds and telecom giants seeking to build similar pan-European networks. The success of Exa’s homogeneous network approach will likely inspire imitators, potentially driving up acquisition prices for remaining independent fiber assets in the region. We’re also likely to see increased focus on subsea cable connections linking these terrestrial networks to global internet exchanges. The recent launch of Exa’s UK-to-mainland Europe route suggests this terrestrial-subsea integration will be the next frontier in the infrastructure arms race.
Investment Trends and Capital Flows
The substantial capital flowing into digital infrastructure—evidenced by Exa’s recent financing and acquisition activity—signals that institutional investors see fiber as a defensive asset class with predictable returns. Unlike more volatile tech sectors, fiber infrastructure offers long-term contracted revenue streams and essential service characteristics that appeal to pension funds and infrastructure investors. This trend is likely to continue as 5G deployment, cloud migration, and IoT applications drive exponential growth in bandwidth demand. The backing from I Squared Capital provides Exa with the patient capital needed to execute this long-term strategy against traditional telecom incumbents.
