Colt was founded as
City Of London Telecommunications in 1992 by
James Hynes, with funds provided by
Fidelity Investments. The company began to construct a
telecoms network in London. In April 2009, Colt completed an
open offer, raising €199.1m before expenses. In May 2011 the company acquired a majority share in MarketPrizm, a provider of
low-latency market data and trading infrastructure services. In August 2012 Colt acquired a majority share in ThinkGrid, a
cloud platform for delivery of
hosted services. On 12 November 2014, Colt acquired
KVH, a
Japanese telecoms company, helping Colt expand in the growing Asian market. In August 2015 the company was fully acquired by Fidelity. On 2 November 2022, Colt agreed to acquire
Lumen Technologies'
Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business for $1.8 billion. In August 2025, the company suffered a cyber attack in which the attacker was able to access customer data. ==Operations==