In an announcement yesterday, T-Mobile and KKR announced a joint venture to acquire Metronet. The deal follows May’s announcement of a JV with EQT to buy Lumos, offering us a second data point on what seems to be the start of a residential fiber rollup by the ‘Uncarrier’.
Metronet operates an FTTH footprint touching 90 communities across 17 states and reaching 2M homes. Their footprint touches much of the Midwest, with some in the southwest and south as well. Their most recent expansion project is in Wilmington NC, where they broke ground on a $30M network just last week.
The current owners are Oak Hill Capital, the Cinelli family, and, yes KKR which has been a minority investor already. The new JV between KKR and T-Mobile will actually include Oak Hill and the Cinelli family will each retain a minority interest going forward.
Metronet itself will become a wholesale provider for its retail customers. T-Mobile will take over the residential retail side, transferring the customers over and taking responsibility for future residential customer acquisition and support.
Just how that will fit together with their existing Lumos Networks investment will be interesting to watch. T-Mobile clearly has extensive last mile ambitions, looking to add the wireline option its rivals at AT&T and Verizon have always had when it comes to meeting the needs of the consumer. Further such investments in regional FTTH operators would surely not surprise anyone.
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Categories: FTTH · Mergers and Acquisitions · Wireless
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What happens to Metronet’s non-residential retail customers?
If T-Mobile is going to be the retail side of the Metronet back end, will Metronet be open to other retail residential customers?