- In a staid fiber construction marketplace, Trueline has entered the scene
- Competitors include big names like MasTec and Dycom
- Trueline's backer is Grain Management
Fiber companies have always had a small pool of construction firms to choose from including big names like Dycom and MasTec. But now, Trueline Infrastructure Solutions has entered the scene — adding competition to what has traditionally been a staid market.
Sensing that boom times are coming in fiber construction, private equity company Grain Management, a well-known telecom investor, brought together three of its services companies to form Trueline in 2023. This new company will design, construct and manage fiber optic networks providing an additional option to all the companies rushing to close the digital divide.
Indeed, fiber construction is on the upswing. Gary Bolton, CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association, said in a letter to members of the organization this week, “What a difference a quarter makes!” He noted how hard the first part of 2024 was for fiber vendors who were working down inventories, but now things are stabilized. “Every state broadband director I have spoken with is working toward putting their project in position for its fiber deployment construction programs to be underway as soon as the ground thaws next spring,” he said.
For its part, Trueline is made up of three previously family owned businesses: Atlantic Engineering Group, Fiber Optic Services and Young’s Communications. Now, as a single entity it plans to focus on fiber-to-the-home builds and also do middle-mile construction and fiber to connect data centers as well as fiber inside data centers.
In addition, the company will also offer federal grant planning and support, engineering and design, right-of-way permitting, and all of the technical services to construct aerial and underground fiber networks.
A startup is born
The company’s CEO, Rob Hughart, has been working for over a year to pull together Trueline. In what seems like preparation for that “spring thaw” that Bolton mentioned above, Hughart told Fierce Network that “this is not a science project for [Grain].”
Grain already owns several fiber-optic service providers including Ritter Communications, Great Plains Communications, Summit Broadband, Hunter Communications and 123Net so the fiber construction business goes hand-in-hand with its ISP businesses. “We are the services play that goes along with their ISP play,” Hughart said.
While Grain owns service providers, Trueline won’t just be providing its services exclusively to Grain’s ISPs. It will offer its network services to any ISP, hyperscaler or other infrastructure builder that has a need.
To ensure a Trueline had a solid industry knowledge-base, one of the first things Hughart did was to create a leadership team of executives with experience in telecom from companies such as Black & Veatch, MasTec, Frontier and Tilson, to name a few. Hughart himself has over 30 years of experience in the telecom industry, mainly focused on engineering and network construction. Prior to joining Trueline, he held leadership positions at Tilson Technology, KGPCo, Frontier Communications, Verizon and Bell Atlantic.
The company has about 400 employees, and it provides engineering in all 50 states and construction in 42 states. Its competitors include Tilson, MasTec, Dycom and Congruex. Trueline’s headquarters is in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and it has 68 satellite facilities across the country.