Here’s another fiber play by private equity, this time up in the Northeast with two providers that I haven’t run into before. Boston’s Riverside Partners is putting money into segTEL, becoming its largest shareholder. segTEL operates a fiberoptic network in the upper New England states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine which by September is expected to exceed 100,000 fiber miles.
The investment is being made through Riverside’s porfolio company Tech Valley Communications, which operates metro and regional fiber in what is known as the Tech Valley Region of Upstate New York (think Poughkeepsie, Albany, etc). Tech Valley claims some 500 lit buildings across some 450 route miles and 32,000 fiber miles – which I have now added to my metro fiber and lit building list. Riverside bought Tech Valley Communications back in November, in a deal that managed to slip completely undetected past my radar at the time.
When combined and well funded, the two companies hope to take on the New England fiber market – one which has seen substantial consolidation already lately. However, I haven’t yet found many details (let alone a map) for either company’s assets just yet – perhaps they will become more gregarious with growth. I’m curious though just how many other fiber operators are out there in New England that I still haven’t run into.
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Categories: Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber
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Do you know about ION? 2000+ miles of fiber throughout upstate NY, and a Round 1 BTOP award winner for another 1300 miles.
It’s strange that segTEL has no real website to speak of.
Doesn’t surprise me, I’m a customer of SegTel, they are a terrible company to work with, customer service is about on par with the website…which is to say none!