The consolidation of the data centre hosting and cloud computing sector by US telecommunications companies continued today, as Louisiana-headquartered CenturyLink announced its intention to acquire Savvis for $2.5 billion.

The deal follows the acquisitions of Terremark by US telco Verizon Business in January and of Navisite by Time Warner Cable in February.

It will accelerate CenturyLink’s "ability to deliver quality managed hosting and cloud capabilities to its business customers", the company said in a statement.

Telecommunications providers sees in cloud computing an opportunity to expand their service offerings to businesses. There is certainly an argument that their established billing infrastructure lends itself to cloud computing’s utility service model.

Savvis, which was ranked as a market leader for infrastructure-as-a-service in Gartner’s recent Magic Quadrant, recently became the first cloud computing provider to sell cloud services to UK government. Under a recent deal estimated to be worth around £14 million, the company will host the Ministry of Justice’s forthcoming shared IT services platform on a scalable basis.

CenturyLink is the third largest telco in the US following its acquisition of Qwest last year. Qwest was previously been one of the ‘Baby Bells’, the regional telecommunications providers created when the original AT&T was dismantled by regulators.