Oak Hill Capital snaps up FirstLight Fiber, says it will accelerate company's growth prospects

FirstLight Fiber, a competitive provider that has found a growing niche in New York and Northern New England competing with FairPoint and Comcast Business (NASDAQ: CMCSA), has agreed to be acquired by Oak Hill Capital.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Oak Hill will acquire FirstLight from its current private equity owner Riverside Partners.

Upon closing the deal, Riverside said it will retain a minority stake in FirstLight.

It appears that the Oak Hill wants to accelerate the company's growth prospects organically and through purchasing other regional providers.

Scott Baker, a Partner at Oak Hill, said in a release that "We see tremendous opportunity to create additional value by continuing to expand FirstLight's fiber footprint while also pursuing acquisitions."

Growing the company has been an ongoing thesis for FirstLight.

After changing its name from Tech Valley to FirstLight in late 2013, the service provider who traces its roots as an Albany, Ny.-based provider has expanded its network base through three key acquisitions: segTEL in New Hampshire, TelJet, in Vermont and G4 in New Hampshire.

Complementing the acquisitions, FirstLight expanded its fiber route miles from 199 miles to over 2,500 miles and today operates a network of over 260,000 fiber miles with over 2,000 on-net locations and 14,000 near-net buildings.

In January, the service provider completed the expansion of 36,000 miles into New York's Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties, enabling it to fulfill a mix of wireless backhaul and enterprise service opportunities.

By making that network expansion, FirstLight said that it would have more fiber in close proximity to over 4,000 cell towers and enterprise locations.

For more:
- see the release

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