Ownership

Consolidated Communications has agreed to be bought for $3.1 billion, including debt, in a take-private deal that will remove the fiber company from the public markets as it grapples with higher interest rates and rising costs. Searchlight Capital Partners, a private-equity firm that already owns more than 34 percent of Consolidated Communications, and British Columbia Investment Management agreed to pay $4.70 a share for the company. The company has faced various challenges as it works to build up its next-generation fiber network.

United Communications CEO William Bradford purchased what was then United Telephone in 2011, a rural phone company founded more than 75 years ago to bring telephone service to unserved rural areas. His first order of business (after changing the name to United Communications) was to upgrade the organization’s infrastructure and start bringing internet services to its footprint of mostly rural customers. Today, United serves 70,000 middle-Tennessee homes with internet service and will reach a total of 80,000 homes by the end of 2023.

One year has passed since Brightspeed became the fifth largest incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) in the US, and it’s made some notable progress in its $2 billion multi-year fiber deployment. Most of Brightspeed’s footprint is currently served with copper, but the operator is undertaking fiber builds in 17 states and officially launched fiber service on March 1, 2023.

LICT is best known as a rural broadband consolidator, but several months ago the company quietly added Sound Broadband to its holdings, not through an acquisition, but organically.

I’m mystified when large internet service providers (ISP) and carriers have significant layoffs at a time when they seem to be doing well; it’s a pattern that we’ve seen over and over during the last several decades. The latest big layoff is coming from T-Mobile, which announced in August that it is eliminating 5,000 jobs, about 7 percent of its total workforce.

The labor agreement that writers struck with studios and streaming platforms will likely accelerate the end to “peak TV," a decade that included an explosion of programming for viewers and job opportunities for talent in Hollywood. Streamers will have to find a way to pay increased talent costs—from the writers’ settlement, along with an earlier deal with directors and whatever is finalized with actors—without adding to their overall production costs. That will likely mean that companies will make fewer new shows and cancel even more that are on the bubble.

As part of DISH’s involvement in the T-Mobile-Sprint transaction, and in connection with DISH’s related applications for an extension of time to complete construction of its facilities for its AWS-4, Lower 700 MHz E Block, and AWS H Block licenses, DISH committed to construct a nationwide 5G broadband network.

Elon Musk’s international influence poses an interesting problem for the US In a world where geopolitical leadership depends increasingly on technology, Musk ought to be one of the US’s most important assets. And yet he is a de facto independent actor. Musk owes his influence not to the control of oil, capital or private armies, but of technologies vital to economic competitiveness, national security and public opinion. NASA and the Pentagon depend heavily on Musk-owned SpaceX to get into space.

Anna Gomez is the newest, and fifth, Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. This may allow the FCC to pursue a Democratic agenda to tackle various issues:

 Nebraska-based Allo Communications, a competitive provider that serves urban and rural areas, has seen strong growth over the 20 years since its founding. Allo CEO Brad Moline talks about the many rounds of investment the company has received—from his own pocket to private equity. “It’s such a capital-intensive industry that you just go through evolutions of investors,” said Moline. “I just try to run a perpetual business and as investors want to come in, or go out, or invest more, we can look at it and accommodate them,” he added.