Archtop Fiber sprang to life last year with $350 million in funding and a plan to reach 500,000 locations in underserved parts of New York’s Hudson Valley. But a lot has changed in a year, and both the company’s expansion ambitions and leadership team have grown substantially.
Thus far, the operator has announced plans to build in Kingston, Ulster and Saugerties, New York. And since last August, it has also made two acquisitions, scooping up GTel in November to serve more than five towns in Columbia County, New York and Hancock Telephone Company in January to gain a foothold in Delaware County, New York as well as parts of northeastern Pennsylvania. Both deals are expected to close in the first half of 2023.
In addition to serving markets in New York and Pennsylvania, Archtop has also indicated it is interested in expanding to Massachusetts.
Archtop declined to provide more detail about its plans, with a representative stating only that "we have signed numerous MOUs and are continuing to receive enthusiastic political response across our markets."
To help achieve its expansion goals, the operator further strengthened its leadership team this week with two new hires. One of those, its new VP of Operations Kathy Kirchner, joined the company from Altice USA and previously spent more than a decade working for Comcast. At Altice, she was SVP of Customer Operations, while her roles at Comcast included VP of National Customer Operations and AVP of Connectivity Product Operations and Xfinity Mobile Care.
At Archtop, Kirchner will oversee all of the operator’s day-to-day field operations, including business operations, service delivery and customer care.
The operator also hired John Boolukos as VP of Business Services, tasking him with standing up its business offerings. Boolukos previously spent six years as VP of the East and South Regions for Konica Minolta’s IT services division All Covered and nearly five years as Regional VP for EarthLink Business. He also spent more than two decades with Verizon, serving in various roles including Area VP before leaving in 2010.
The additions of Kirchner and Boolukos follow Archtop’s hire of a slew of executives last month, including Mike Scardina as VP of Engineering and Technology, Kevin Culver as VP of Finance and Alex Harris as VP of Network and Systems Planning.