The sixth largest broadband provider in the U.S. is rebranding, announcing its regional offshoots RCN, Grande, Wave Broadband, enTouch and Digital West will all unite under the Astound Broadband name starting Wednesday.
Until now, each ISP has operated under its own brand name. While they will all adopt the Astound Broadband name going forward, the original titles will be retained as part of a “powered by” naming scheme. For instance, Grande’s name will change to “Astound Broadband powered by Grande”. The companies will adopt the moniker Astound Business Solutions for enterprise services.
Jim Holanda, Astound Broadband’s CEO, told Fierce “to see this day come to fruition is very exicitng” given “it’s been a long time coming.”
He explained that back in 2016 when Astound’s former owner TPG Capital acquired RCN and Grande, the company had conversations about whether it should combine the brands, but decided to keep the standalone monikers because of their strength and customer satisfaction ratings. The same decision was made when Wave was acquired in 2017. But as the company’s M&A activity continued, Holanda said it became increasingly apparent it would need to unite its disparate brands.
Work on the rebranding effort began nearly two and a half years ago, he said, but the launch was delayed by the pandemic and because Astound wanted to wait for its sale from TPG to Stonepeak to close before making its move.
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“Really what we’re trying to do is as we continue to do M&A activity we can’t be operating seven or eight different regional brands, causing confusion in the marketplace,” Holanda explained. “We’ll have almost 1.2 million customers here under the Astound brand later this year and bringing all of that into one company so people understand that we’re one company is important as we move forward.”
Astound’s family of brands serves eight of the top ten metro markets in the country. RCN provides service across Boston, Chicago, parts of Pennsylvania, New York City and Washington DC. Grande offers service in Texas, with enTouch covering the greater Houston area. Wave’s footprint spans parts of Washington, Oregon and California and Digital West serves central California.
Last year, the company acquired fiber provider Harris Broadband, which serves central Texas. It also purchased assets in Chicago, Illinois; Evansville, Indiana; and Anne Arundel, Maryland from WideOpenWest (WOW!) for $661 million.
Holanda said both the Harris Broadband and WOW! systems will adopt the new branding by mid-2022, once Astound has finished working through billing conversions and product alignments.