Astound, GFiber to Merge

A bit of significant last mile fiber consolidation landed this week. Astound Broadband and GFiber, which used to go by the name Google Fiber, will be merging.

Thus will end an era that started in 2012 where Google, I mean Alphabet, became a retail network operator in Kansas City. It was not a stealth move in any form. They spent a year building up the excitement, asking cities to make the case for why they should be the one. And while it’s debateable whether the effort was worth it in the end, one has to admit that Google did prove its point.

Today GFiber operates FTTH footprints in some 43 markets in 19 states around the country. When Google Fiber was originally founded, the FTTH world was still struggling to fully launch, and Google was a big part of proving the case that such businesses were worth investing in. Fast forward to today and we have dozens of entities out there backed by billions of dollars happily doing what was previously thought to be economic insanity.

For its part, Astound Broadband has been around since 2018, emerging from the combination o fWave Broadband, RCN, and Grande Communications by TPG Capital. Stonepeak bought it during the pandemic in a leveraged buyout. The company operates primarily in California, the Pacific Northwest, Texas, and the I-95 corridor between Virginia and Boston, combining last mile fiber with regional connectivity. After the combination with GFiber, clearly they will have more mass on the FTTx end than before.

Financial details of the transaction were nit disclosed. However, Stonepeak will be the majority owner of the combined entity, while Alphabet will remain as a significant minority shareholder. If all goes well, the deal will close in Q4 of this year.

 

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