Nascent fiber-to-the-home provider Novos Fiber is expanding into its second market in McKinney, Texas, a move that is fueled by a $20 million private equity-backed investment.
Last November, Novos announced its debut market in Arlington, Texas, where it set aside more than $20 million for its network build. The company this week said it plans to invest an additional $25 million in Arlington and it already has live customers there.
Construction in McKinney, a suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, began several months ago and Novos expects to offer services to “Phase 1” residents by end of February. It will turn up service in “additional communities” over the coming weeks and months.
“We're delighted to be building in McKinney. It's an incredibly vibrant and fast-growing city and we're excited to bring residents high-speed fiber internet with our promise of fairness, transparency and a genuine focus on the customer experience,” stated Novos Fiber CEO Andrew Snead.
According to HighSpeedInternet.com, the top residential broadband providers in McKinney are Optimum and Spectrum for cable and AT&T and EarthLink for fiber. Rise Broadband and Towerstream also serve the city with fixed wireless access.
Novos currently offers three fiber internet plans: 300 Mbps ($59.99 per month), 1-gig ($79.99/month) and a 2.5-gig tier ($114.99/month).
Snead told Fierce in November Novos aims to “simplify the experience and inject a little fun into the way we do business.”
“Internet has become somewhat of a grudge purchase, and we want our customers to enjoy the interactions and services they have with us,” he added.
The ISP is backed by InLight Capital, a Texas-based private investment firm. Novos is one of a number of providers tapping into private financing to move faster on fiber deployments.
Some notable PE-backed fiber players include Brightspeed (Apollo), Great Plains Communications (Grain Management), Ting Internet (Generate Capital) and Ziply Fiber (WaveDivision Capital). Most recently, Consolidated Communications agreed to be acquired by Searchlight Capital and BCI for $3.1 billion.