Telstra has acquired Asian telecoms service provider Pacnet for $697 million to boost its position outside of Australia.

Pacnet is a regional provider of connectivity, managed services and data centre services. It owns more than 46,000km of submarine cable infrastructure across Asia and the Pacific Ocean and has nearly 100 points-of-presence (PoPs) globally.

It has more than 1,200 employees across 28 offices in 13 countries, with headquarters in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The acquisition includes interests in its China joint venture, PBS, which is licensed to operate a domestic IP VPN and provide data centre services in most major provinces in the country.

The deal, which was first revealed last week, is subject to regulatory and Pacnet owners’ approvals and is expected to be completed by mid-2015.

David Thodey, Telstra CEO, said the acquisition is a significant step for Telstra as it expands beyond Australia. “Asia is an important part of our growth strategy. We believe this acquisition will help us become a leading provider of enterprise services to multinational companies and carriers in the region.”

The expanded network and data-centre capabilities will strengthen Telstra’s aggressive push into enterprise services, which cover unified communications, managed network services and security services.

Last year Pacnet had revenue of $472 million and EBITDA of $111 million.