Consolidation among fiber infrastructure providers just keeps on chugging along. This mornings deal comes from a familiar source, FirstLight Fiber. FirstLight has been rolling up fiber assets across northern New England and upstate New York for many years now, and today they announced a definitive agreement to acquire 186 Communications.
186 Communications operates a fiber network spanning much of New Hampshire as well as parts of Massachusetts and Vermont. That network spans 1,000 route miles hooking up 56 on-net buildings and includes a 30,000 square foot colocation facility.
Those assets fit quite snugly with FirstLight’s other acquisitions in the region, which include Oxford Networks, Sovernet, Teljet, G4 Communications, and SegTel and of course the original Tech Valley Communications assets. FirstLight’s other pending acquisition is of course Finger Lakes Technologies Group.
The pace of acquisitions has picked up since Oak Hill Capital took over as the primary private equity owner of the company last Spring. But there aren’t that many remaining independent targets across this region after 186, and so perhaps the next step in inorganic expansion will be into adjacent territories in lower New England or into New Jersey, or Pennsylvania.
The deal is expected to close at the end of 2017. Financial terms were not disclosed. Bank Street served as financial advisor to 186.
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Categories: Fiber Networks · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber
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