Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Telecommunications |
Founded | January 24, 2018 |
Headquarters | , United States |
Services | |
Parent | Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners |
Divisions |
|
Website | astound |
Astound Broadband is an American telecommunications holding company based in Princeton, New Jersey. It was formed on January 24, 2018, with the completion of the $2.36 billion purchase of Kirkland-based Wave Broadband by private-equity firm TPG Capital. TPG combined Wave with its existing combination of Princeton-based RCN Corporation and San Marcos-based Grande Communications, both of which were acquired on February 1, 2017, in a $2.25 billion deal; TPG bought RCN for $1.6 billion and Grande for $650 million. [1] [2] [3] [4]
While TPG held the Internet providers as an unnamed collective unit, they somewhat maintained independence from each other despite sharing resources. TPG then expanded the unit with its purchase of Houston-based enTouch Systems on September 18, 2020, for an undisclosed sum. [5] [6] Less than two months later, Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners announced on November 1 that it would purchase the unit, by then named Astound after a previous name used by Wave in San Francisco, from TPG for $3.6 billion along with $4.5 billion in debt through a leveraged buyout; [6] [7] [8] TPG had explored selling Astound due to the increased demand for Internet bandwidth during the COVID-19 pandemic. [9] Astound's expansion continued with its purchase of San Luis Obispo-based Digital West on January 26, 2021, also for an undisclosed sum. [10]
Astound Broadband was a provider of cable TV, broadband internet, and telephone services on the West Coast, and served over 325,000 residential and business customers within communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Astound provided services via their fiber-optic network, including high speed internet, digital cable, home phone service, international programming, DVR, HDTV, and TV On Demand. [11]
Astound Broadband was part of WaveDivision Holdings, LLC, which is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. On May 1, 2015, Astound Broadband in San Francisco adopted the parent company's name and was rebranded Wave, which offers the same services to the same geographical areas. [12]
KPN is a Dutch telecommunications company. KPN originated from a government-run postal, telegraph and telephone service and is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
TPG is an Australian internet service provider that specialises in consumer and business internet services as well as mobile telephone services. As of August 2015, TPG is the second largest internet service provider in Australia and is the largest mobile virtual network operator. As such, it has over 671,000 ADSL2+ subscribers, 358,000 landline subscribers and 360,000 mobile subscribers, and owns the second largest ADSL2+ network in Australia, consisting of 391 ADSL2+ DSLAMs. It also operates in New Zealand.
Cogeco Inc. is a Canadian telecommunications and media company. Its corporate offices are located at 1 Place Ville-Marie in Montreal, Quebec. The company is structured into three strategic business units (SBU); Cogeco Connexion, Breezeline, and Cogeco Media. The company provides a range of telecommunication products and services including cable television, radio and television broadcasting, telephony, and Internet services in Ontario and Quebec in Canada, and in thirteen states along the east coast of the United States.
Altice USA, Inc., commonly known as Altice, is an American cable television provider with headquarters in New York City, owned by the Franco-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi. It delivers pay television, Internet access, telephone services, and original television content to approximately 4.9 million residential and business customers in 21 states.
Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. With over 32 million customers in 41 states, it is the largest cable operator in the United States by subscribers, just ahead of Comcast, and the largest pay TV operator ahead of Comcast and AT&T. Charter is the fifth-largest telephone provider based on number of residential lines.
Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operating in 29 states. Its corporate headquarters were located in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with other corporate offices in Stamford, Connecticut; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Herndon, Virginia.
Broadstripe is a telecommunications and cable company owned by WideOpenWest and Anne Arundel Broadband, with WideOpenWest holding a majority stake in the company. Serving communities in Maryland, Broadstripe serves residential customers with WOW! serving business customers, with entertainment and communications products including digital cable, home phone and broadband internet services.
WideOpenWest is the eighth largest cable operator in the United States with their network passing 1.9 million homes and businesses. The company offers landline telephone, cable television, and broadband Internet services. As of November 3, 2022, WOW! has about 538,100 subscribers.
Frontier Communications Parent, Inc. is an American telecommunications company. Known as Citizens Utilities Company until 2000, Citizens Communications Company until 2008, and Frontier Communications Corporation until 2020, as a communications provider with a fiber-optic network and cloud-based services, Frontier offers broadband internet, digital television, and computer technical support to residential and business customers in 25 states. In some areas it also offers home phone services.
RCN Corporation, originally Residential Communications Network, founded in 1993 and based in Princeton, New Jersey, was the first American facilities-based ("overbuild") provider of bundled cable telephony, cable television, and internet service delivered over its own hybrid fiber-coaxial local network as well as dialup and DSL Internet service to consumers in the Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. areas.
Breezeline is the trade name for the United States operations of Cogeco Communications, constituting the 8th largest cable operator in the United States, based on the number of television service customers served. The company currently provides TV, Internet and phone services using a combined coaxial cable & fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. Breezeline currently has approximately 707,000 broadband customers located in twelve states: New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, South Carolina, and Florida. The company is headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Vocus Group Limited, formerly known as Vocus Communications, is an international telecommunications company headquartered in North Sydney, Australia. Founded by James Spenceley as a wholesale, business, government and consumer telecommunications provider, Vocus owns and manages Australia's second largest intercapital fibre network. Vocus provides retail, wholesale and corporate telecommunications services across Australia and New Zealand. Vocus offers data network services such as Internet, dark fibre, IP WAN, unified communications and telephony and cloud services to mid, large and corporate businesses direct and also acts as a wholesaler. The company owns and operates 18 data centres across Australia and New Zealand and has an onshore network operations centre run by the engineers who built the network.
Grande Communications Networks, LLC is an American telecommunications company, based in San Marcos, Texas, that uses a fiber optic and cable network to offer broadband services. The company was established in 1999 when it was the recipient of the largest round of venture capital funding in Texas. Grande delivers internet access, local and long-distance telephone service and digital cable over its own network to nine different markets in Texas. Grande Communications serves as the primary provider of cable services for dormitories on the campuses of Texas State University, University of the Incarnate Word, Baylor University and the University of Texas at Austin. It is controlled by private equity firm TPG Capital through its affiliate Patriot Media Consulting. Grande Communications is available to an estimated 1.1 million people, making it the 16th largest provider of cable broadband in the U.S. by coverage area.
WaveDivision Holdings, LLC, doing business as Wave Broadband, is an American provider of residential, business, and enterprise class cable TV, broadband Internet, and telephone services to around 455,000 customers in Washington, Oregon, and California. Wave provides services via their own fiber-optic network and has approximately 1,300+ employees.
Lumen Technologies, Inc. is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is a member of the Fortune 500 and has been on the S&P 600 index since being removed from the S&P 500 in March 2023.
Westnet is a Perth-based Australian telecommunications company providing broadband ADSL, broadband ADSL2+, satellite broadband, dialup Internet, telephony and web-hosting services to homes and businesses across Australia.
The Pac-12 Network (P12N), sometimes referred to as Pac-12 Networks, was an American sports-oriented digital cable and satellite television network owned by the Pac-12 Conference. The network's studio and production facilities were headquartered in San Ramon, California.
The history of AT&T dates back to the invention of the telephone. The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell, who obtained the first US patent for the telephone, and his father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Bell and Hubbard also established American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885, which acquired the Bell Telephone Company and became the primary telephone company in the United States. This company maintained an effective monopoly on local telephone service in the United States until anti-trust regulators agreed to allow AT&T to retain Western Electric and enter general trades computer manufacture and sales in return for its offer to split the Bell System by divesting itself of ownership of the Bell Operating Companies in 1982.
Xplore Inc. is a Canadian rural internet service provider. It is the largest rural focused broadband service provider in Canada.
Stonepeak is an American investment firm headquartered in New York City. The firm focuses on investments in infrastructure and more recently real estate. The firm has additional offices in Hong Kong, Houston, London, Sydney and Singapore.
Astound Broadband had an outage for most of Wednesday afternoon and evening.