Feb 26, 2026 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
The last couple of years have seen Cogent converting legacy technical buildings and switch sites previously used for Sprint’s wireline business into colocation data centers. The company has been looking to sell a number of those facilities on a wholesale basis.
In October, Cogent signed a letter of intent to sell two of the data centers it acquired and converted as part of its Sprint acquisition for $144 million in cash. While the company did not disclose which facilities were included in the deal, CEO Dave Schaeffer said they were two of the largest among the 24 wholesale sites Cogent had repurposed.
“The counterpart came back to us and looked for us to provide more than 50 percent of the agreed-to purchase price in owner financing,” Schaeffer said. “We felt that we would be better served with an all-cash purchase rather than one that had us taking more than 50 percent of the purchase price in the form of a secured note against the assets.”
“Since we had a number of other interested parties who had submitted backup offers on those two facilities as well as a broader set of facilities, we decided to terminate that agreement at our choice and then re-engage with some of those parties.”
Schaeffer said Cogent is in active discussions with multiple parties for multiple offers across a broad set of these data centers: “We do expect several of these to result in multi-site acquisition offers. We are far along in those negotiations and hope to be able to announce something soon.”