NY Fiber And Bandwidth Providers Lightower And Sidera Merged

New York based fiber and Internet bandwidth service providers Lightower Fiber Networks and Sidera Networks announced a merger. The new combined company will operate a high-performance, fiber-based network throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, with connections to critical landing sites and exchanges internationally. The combined network will offer customers over 20,000 route miles and provide access to more than 6,000 on-net locations, including commercial buildings, data centers, financial exchanges, content hubs and other critical interconnection facilities.

Lightower Fiber Networks is a metro fiber and bandwidth provider in the Northeast, while Sidera Networks is a provider of tailored, high-capacity communications services to large enterprise, carrier and data center customers. Both companies announced an agreement for a transaction valued at over $2 billion led by Boston-based investment firm Berkshire Partners, to acquire and merge both companies. The combined company will be led by current Lightower CEO, Rob Shanahan. The merger is pending regulatory approval and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.

“Lightower and Sidera together will offer customers an industry-leading, fiber-based network with a deeply experienced team supporting it,” says Rob Shanahan, CEO of Lightower. According to him both companies have “a shared vision of network excellence,customized solutions and superior customer support”. The new merger aims to offer customers more services, more routes and more access options with a high levels of performance, diversity, reliability and support”.

“Berkshire is excited to be working with both Lightower and Sidera – two great companies and two great teams,” explained Randy Peeler, Managing Director of Berkshire. “We have invested in the telecommunications infrastructure space for nearly 20 years and believe that the combined company, with its incredibly robust network, is well positioned for continued growth serving customers with an ever-increasing need for high-performance bandwidth.”

The merger of the Lightower and Sidera is expected to accelerate the strategies of both companies to provide best-in-class, fiber-based networking solutions to enterprise, carrier and government customers. The combined company will provide customers with enhanced access to a diverse and dense high-performance network that can serve the most demanding application requirements. The combined network will haveboth a larger footprint and greater density throughout the Northeast, Midwestand Mid-Atlantic regions, while dramatically increasing the number of datacenters, financial exchanges and interconnection facilities that are served with fiber-based access.

Lightower and Sidera both currently offer fiber-based networking solutions comprised of Ethernet, dark fiber, wavelengths, Internet access, private networks and colocation services. Both companies also offer industry-specific solutions such as ultra-low latency connections for financial services firms, video transport for media companies, wireless backhaul for wireless operators, as well as diverse cloud, content and data center connectivity.