Wednesday Roundup: Global Capacity, Birch, Merit, tw telecom

Here’s a quick mid-week roundup of some interesting news items from this week:

Global Capacity has picked up a new partner with some significant last mile influence. They now have a master service agreement with the National Cable Television Cooperative, or NCTC, giving the organization’s cable operator members a route into Global Capacity’s last mile connectivity marketplace. Global Capacity’s platform has been steadily gaining traction for a long spell now.

Birch Communications officially became a lot bigger on Monday when it closed its purchase of Cbeyond, by far its biggest deal so far. The $323M transaction took away another of the dwindling number of publicly traded alternative network operators in US markets. But I figure when Birch’s rollup slows down, they’ll follow Zayo’s path and do an IPO at some point. The company now has $700M in annualized revenue, serves some

Up in the part of the Midwest that practically never makes the internet infrastructure news, Merit Network and WiscNet have partnered for some new fiber. They recently lit a new fiber buildout connecting the city of Powers on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula down to Chicago, passing through the Wisconsin cities of Superior, Marinette, and Green Bay. Merit has further fiber plans for the Upper Peninsula in the works as well.

And while the merger with Level 3 hangs overhead for the quarter, tw telecom is going about its usual business. They announced another regional multi-site enterprise win of the sort that is their bread and butter. The boutique real estate firm Briggs Freeman will be using their internet, voice, security, and business continuity across five locations in Texas. Helping tw telecom out with the business continuity piece was their local partner VAZATA.

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Categories: Cable · Ethernet · Fiber Networks · Mergers and Acquisitions