FirstLight and Oxford Combine, Sovernet Up Next

As promised over the summer, Oak Hill Capital Partners has completed its acquisition of Oxford Networks.  At the same time, they have taken the company and merged it with their other fiber holding in the area, FirstLight Fiber.  

That means FirstLight Fiber now operates 5,000 route miles across a five-state footprint and reaching up into Canada.  They hook up some 4,400 on-net locations and operate ten data centers across the far northeastern region.  Of course, there will be substantial integration work to do now, as the two companies have partially overlapping footprints as well as somewhat different approaches historically.

But there will be more to come quite soon, as this is of course just the first step in a double acquisition by Oak Hill, rolling up fiber across the upper northeast from Maine to Lake Erie.  Their other purchase of Sovernet is projected to close ‘early in 2017’ and when it does it will boost those numbers to 9,500 route miles of fiber and more than 5,000 on-net locations.

Novacap, Bank Street Capital Partners, and Riverside Partners will all stay on as minority investors in FirstLight Fiber.

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Categories: Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber