The Russian newspaper Kommersant says that the national operator “is considering the purchase of the second largest player on the Russian data centre market”, citing two unnamed sources.
The deal would include Inline Technologies, a systems integrator, says Kommersant.
DataLine says it is a tier III data centre operator and a provider of cloud resources and services, serving enterprises and small and medium businesses.
The company has eight data centres in Moscow with total area of 22,785 square metres and consuming 48.2MW.
Rival operator MTS – owned by the Sistema industrial group – bought another data centre company, IT-Grad Cloud, for $37 million earlier this month. MTS was earlier reported to be interested in DataLine. IT-Grad also operates tier III data centres, with operations in Moscow and St Petersburg in Russia and Almaty in Kazakhstan.
Under a law coming into force this year Russian telcos have to store records of all data and traffic information for six months.
Kommersant says DataLine is worth $500-$600 million but debts are likely to reduce the purchase price to $200-$250 million.
In 2017 Rostelecom increased its stake in another data centre operator, SafeData, from 50.1% to 100%.
