Zayo Buys Fiber Biz From Crown Castle

Zayo has won the competition to acquire Crown Castle’s fiber business, fulfilling the rumors that have been spilling out since January. On Friday, the infrastructure provider announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Crown’s fiber assets, customers, etc for $4.25B. Meanwhile, in a parallel but separate deal, EQT will acquire Crown Castle’s small cell business.

Crown Castle’s fiber business will add 90,000 route miles of fiber to Zayo’s overall footprint. Those assets connect to 44K on-net buildings, 40K towers, and 1,100 data centers, PoPs, and central offices. There is some overlap, so the total increase to Zayo’s connected locations will be some 70K.  It’s a deal that makes a ton of sense for Zayo, looking a lot like the deals it did dozens of back in the heyday of metro fiber M&A.  They add a pile of infrastructure that they can expect to do more with than the prior owners were.

  

Crown’s footprint derives largely from its acquisition spree about a decade ago, when they rolled up Sunesys, Lightower, Wilcon, 24/7 Mid Atlantic Network, FPL Fibernet, and Access Fiber Group over several years.  The vision was that the 5G revolution would require ever more dense backhaul networks built off of small cells and connected by fiber, thus taking their tower business to the next level.  Some of that happened, but the numbers didn’t turn out the way Crown expected and the other aspects of their fiber business like enterprises and wholesale customers kind of got lost in the shuffle.  The tower company spent the last couple years arguing with itself and its investors about how to sell off the assets and refocus the company back on towers and such.

The deal is expected to close in about a year, or the first half of 2026.  Then the hard work starts, as Zayo will need to integrate assets and such across markets nationwide.  It’s nothing they haven’t done before, but that doesn’t make it any easier to do right.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber · Wireless