Fiber M&A: Pilot Buys Boldyn’s NY/NJ Fiber

A significant chunk of modern metro fiber is changing hands in the New York/New Jersey metro area. Today Pilot Fiber and Boldyn Networks have agreed to a transaction that will see Pilot take over Boldyn’s enterprise fiber footprint across the region.

The assets in question are those built by ZenFi and Cross River Fiber, which had themselve merged in 2018. BAI Communications bought ZenFi three and a half years ago before combining it with Mobilitie, Signal Point Systems, and Vilicom to form Boldyn Networks. Now they are carving out the metro fiber footprint and selling it to Pilot Fiber.

It’s Pilot’s second deal of 2026, having also acquired the fiber of Extenet Systems.  When combined with these new assets, Pilot’s footprint in the region will span some 1,600 route miles connecting 1,200 buildings and 50 data centers all within the NYC/NJ metro area. In particular, their reach will be substantially increased in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and across northern New Jersey. That’s some major new scale to play with, and a lot of new territory.

For its part, Boldyn is clearly focusing its business on its core venue, in-building, and transportation wireless infrastructure business. They will continue to have access to the fiber assets in the form of a long-term strategic partnership deal, but won’t need to do the whole enterprise and wholesale fiber thing which has a rather different customer set, capex, and construction profile.

As part of the deal, Fengate Asset Management will be making an equity investment in Pilot as part of $330M in new financing. The Bank Street Group advised Boldyn on the transaction.

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