Private equity aims to supplement, not supplant federal broadband funding

Over the past few years, the US government has allocated billions of dollars for broadband, most recently setting aside $65 billion in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in late 2021. While that’s a lot of cash, it might not stretch as far as one would think when it comes to covering rural and underserved areas. That’s where private equity comes in, according to GTCR managing director Stephen Jeschke. The way Jeschke sees it, delivering broadband to every American is an all-hands-on-deck kind of task. “The way that the government dollars work well is they’re trying to allocate capital to where there’s a need...[but] they’re not subsidizing 100 percent of the build, so there needs to be capital to go in alongside that capital to complete those builds, and, two, there needs to be somebody kind of overseeing the allocation of that capital at a more micro level once they’ve allocated it at a macro level,” he said. Jeschke also noted private equity has a role to play in helping bring more competition and better service to areas that are technically already considered served and thus aren’t eligible to receive deployment subsidies. GTCR primarily invests in four areas: Financial services and technology; healthcare; business and consumer services; and technology, media and telecom. As far as the latter is concerned, the company is primarily focused on connecting rural markets. Its telecom holdings include Clearwave Fiber (a joint venture with Cable One), Point Broadband and Vyve Broadband. Through these assets, Jeschke said GTCR has its hand in fiber builds across 20 or so states.