Altafiber, formerly known as Cincinnati Bell, has been busy this year with its fiber buildout – both within its incumbent territory and in expansion markets. Outside its footprint, the operator plans to reach 400,000 locations with fiber across Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
Mark Fahner, altafiber’s VP of corporate development, told Fierce altafiber has “well over 200,000” passings in progress, though not all of those have been completed. The company’s also constructing fiber to every single-family unit within its home market of greater Cincinnati, and it expects to complete that work by the end of 2023.
Cincinnati Bell was acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure Partners in September 2021, rebranding to altafiber in March 2022. Macquarie this summer led a $600 million equity raise to fuel the company’s network expansion.
In Hawaii, altafiber’s other incumbent market, the company operates as Hawaiian Telcom and is working on a statewide fiber network there. It’s aiming to complete that build by the end of 2027.
Fahner didn’t provide a timeline for the 400,000 out-of-footprint target, just noting altafiber will reach that goal “over the course of our business plan.” As for which markets it’s eyeing, he said the company is looking at “a mix” of rural and suburban communities.
“It’s really opportunistic as much as anything, where you know the environment’s right and we like to build tight relationships with the communities,” he said. Many (but not all) of those relationships are public-private partnerships.
Altafiber in the past year entered public-private partnerships covering 160,000 addresses, with the “big hitters” located in Ohio’s Butler County, Warren County, Greene County and the city of Dublin.
Late last month, altafiber revealed 13 new markets it will expand to in 2024, covering 65,000 locations. All but one of the markets are in Ohio, and the remaining project will take place in Aurora, Indiana. None of them are public-private partnerships, Fahner said.
Regarding speed tiers offered in new markets, he said customers can currently sign up for 2-gig service, “with an upgrade path to 10-gig” as technology matures and price points come down.
“We are also testing 25-gig and all of that is on XGS-PON and is designed for residential and small to mid-size businesses,” Fahner explained. “We also offer enterprise solutions up to 100-Gig and beyond today.”
As rollouts continue, altafiber scooped up a couple of smaller fiber companies. In June, the operator agreed to acquire Bridgewired, an ISP based in Waynesville, Ohio. Last December, altafiber bought municipal FTTH assets from the city of Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
Fahner described both transactions as “tuck-in” acquisitions. In the case of Bridgewired, the assets were “relatively small and kind of helped to further our builds” around its expansion markets.
Altafiber’s builds are primarily privately funded, though some of the public-private partnership communities leverage American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding. Fahner said the company does plan to have a look at the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, but it’s still waiting for all the BEAD guidelines to come out.
“We’re going to opportunistically just kind of pursue those and evaluate those, mostly in adjacent territories,” he said. “But there’s still an awful lot that has to be sorted through with that.”
Altafiber was among a group of regional ISPs that called the BEAD letter of credit rule, which requires applicants to prove they have 25% of their grant amount in a cash bank account, “overly burdensome.” The NTIA since then released a waiver providing several alternatives to the LOC.