Metro Bytes: Bluebird, Metro, T5, GPC

Four bits of infrastructure news of regional and metro interest to catch up with:

Bluebird Fiber’s plans to acquire Everstream has been approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. They had gone in as the stalking horse bidder and followed through to win the auction. Regulatory approvals are next, and the deal is expected to close by the end of 2025.  The combination will create a regional infrastructure powerhouse spanning nearly all of the Midwest.

There was also another bit of fiber M&A in the Midwest this week. Metro Communications will be acquiring MTCO Communications. MTCO serves about 10,000 customers in central Illinois where it has transitioned from ILEC to fiber-based CLEC over the last 10 years. Metro serves residential customers across Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.  Houlihan Lokey advised MTCO on the transaction.

T5 Data Centers is partnering with Bitfarms to help build out the latter’s infrastructure in Panther Creek, Pennsylvania. They will act as a strategic construction partner for Bitfarms as the latter moves deeper into high performance computing and AI. Bitfarms got its start as a bitcoin miner, and operates 15 data centers in the US, Canada, Argentina, and Paraguay.  Panther Creek is in the Poconos near Scranton.

And Great Plains Communications is teaming up with Fortinet to expand its SMB offerings out in Nebraska and neighboring states. They will be leveraging Fortinet’s FortiGate next-gen firewall technology to add more managed security options to their portfolio alongside SD-WAN. GPC is looking to help small businesses in an increasingly connected ecosystem where businesses of any size can be vulnerable to attack.

 

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Categories: Datacenter · Fiber Networks · FTTH · Managed Services · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber · Security