The fiber saw another bit of consolidation this morning, as Zayo Group struck again with an announcement of its acquisition of the MidWestern dark fiber operator FiberLink LLC.
FiberLink operates a unique dark fiber route between Chicago and Denver that runs through Des Moines and Omaha. The deal brings 1,200 route miles of dark fiber network to Zayo, which they will of course light some of before long — probably with the 100G they’ve been rolling out. It also fills in a longhaul route that further glues together Zayo’s once disparate assets.
Zayo’s year has been relatively quiet, but only because last year was so noisy with the AboveNet deal and a whole group of smaller but still significant purchases. By all other measures, they’ve been busy on the M&A front, buying CoreNAP in Austin and Access Communications up in Minneapolis. The latter just closed last week. Today’s purchase of FiberLink appears to be a done deal already, with Zayo drawing a bit of its $250M revolver to make it happen.
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Categories: Fiber Networks · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber
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TWC buying Dukenet, wow.
Yep, it does take a few minutes to write these things up though… 🙂
I’d think that it would make sense for TW Cable to purchase Edison Carrier Solutions as well. They are an entity that was started by the largest power company in California. They have fiber networks in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Oxnard, Irvine, Riverside, San Bernardino, Victorville (LATA 730), and extends into Palm Springs (LATA 973) and vicinity. It would be a brilliant pick up for TWC.
does this seem to be a purchase but also a partnership with a company that builds dark fiber networks turnkey maybe complimenting the new offering. Ownership structure of Fiberlink seems to fall into Pinpoint who also own Optika/Pinpoint Towers etc, Seems like a deal with moe then just a fier network weaved into it.
I wondered if Pinpoint might be involved, but with the TW/DukeNet deal I haven’t followed up yet. Thanks for hilighting the possibility.
This connection to Pinpoint is one of the first things I thought of when seeing this. I think several companies are claiming this route. I’d assume they’re IRUs off of the original 360 build. Who is responsible for maintenance now, *shrugs*.
anonymous is accurate on connection. fiberlink is a sister company of pinpoint and other firms owned by dick shoemaker. there probably is some other deal associated with this transaction that we don’t know about yet….
the route (at least through NE) is on a route almost exactly that L3 follows.
http://www.pnptholdings.com/page29391.asp
Pinpoint is one of three independent phone companies with minority stakes in Fiberlink. Another share is held by Anderson Pacific, a Chicago investment house.
Fiberlink’s founding asset was the Chicago to Denver route purchased out of PathNet’s backruptcy in 2004. PathNet’s original partner on the route was 360 networks, now part of Zayo. But 360 unloaded assets after its own bankruptcy in the same period, and several websites mention the 360 trustee selling the route in 2004 to a major telecom co.
360 sold it to VZB I think
Congratulations again to Dan Caruso and team. Another smart buy that will help to drive addition value.
I cant help but agree with Grant Lewis. Every M&A an d every step Zayo seems to take makes perfect sense and provides and easy to see startegic value. They are making Telecom Network Development look easy when is reality it is complicated.