A Peek into the GFiber-Astound Merger

The recently announced merger between GFiber and Astound is interesting. It brings together a premium fiber overbuilder and a traditional cable company that also owns some fiber assets. GFiber has been somewhat of a mystery in the industry since its splashy launch in 2012. Known then as Google Fiber, the company was the first to introduce the whole country to the idea of gigabit fiber. Astound Broadband is a conglomerate of three broadband businesses.

1. The original Astound started as a cable company in the San Francisco Bay area. The company purchased additional cable properties in Washington and Oregon and rebranded as Wave Broadband.
2. RCN was founded in 1993 and had the unique business plan of overbuilding existing cable companies using cable company technology. The company was concentrated in the northeast, with the most customers in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Allentown, and Washington DC.
3. Grande Communications was founded in San Marcos, Texas, in 1999. The company started by providing cable TV to campuses at Texas State University, the University of the Incarnate Word, Baylor University, and the University of Texas at Austin. The company grew to have over 1.1 million passings.

The merger announcement says that Astound covers around 4.6 million passings and has around 1 million broadband customers. The combined company would have 2 million customers and 7.1 million passings. This would make the company the seventh-largest internet service provider after Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, Altice, and T-Mobile.