Consolidated Communications is in the process of bringing FairPoint under its common brand while enhancing consumer and business services in its newly acquired Northern New England territories.
The Mattoon, Illinois-based service provider will begin the rebranding process, replacing the FairPoint logo on its service trucks in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont starting this month.
"It's a new chapter for us,” Rob Koester, vice president for consumer products, told the Associated Press. “It's a rededication to our customers.”
RELATED: Consolidated employs VDSL2+ to extend 50-100 Mbps speeds to FairPoint regions
In July, Consolidated completed its $1.3 billion acquisition of FairPoint Communications. What’s significant about the deal is that Consolidated became the ninth largest fiber provider in the United States.
By purchasing FairPoint, Consolidated added over 22,000 route miles to its fiber network without any overlapping markets. The service provider’s fiber network will now span over 36,000 route miles. Additionally, Consolidated also grows its on-net fiber building count to 8,800 and fiber-connected towers total to 2,600. These elements make Consolidated a more relevant player in the wholesale wireless backhaul and business services domains.
One of the first priorities for Consolidated, particularly in the Northern New England territory, is to hone its broadband plans. As part of the rebranding and integration process, Consolidated has been developing a broadband marketing and promotion strategy. Consolidated is marketing its higher speed offerings in the parts of FairPoint’s areas that have not been marketed to today.
Initially, the service provider plans to implement VDSL2+ to immediately deliver speeds of 50-100 Mbps using FairPoint’s existing copper facilities. Consolidated will more aggressively market and expand upon FairPoint’s 1 Gbps-capable broadband services, which run over the telco’s existing FTTH network.
On the business services front, the service provider plans to expand its cloud services product suite to FairPoint markets. Earlier this month, FairPoint launched its virtual customer premises equipment, marking the service provider’s movement toward network functions virtualization for business customers, for example.