Wave Broadband is continuing its growth spree, announcing that it has acquired Seattle-based ISP Cascadelink, which delivers broadband connectivity to residential and commercial customers in multiple dwelling unit (MDU) residential and office buildings throughout the Seattle area.
Terms of the acquisition were not revealed.
Cascadelink provides symmetrical gigabit service to thousands of customers in an expanding MDU network of more than 100 Seattle-area apartments, condominiums and commercial office buildings.
Wave currently serves over 140 cities in Washington, Oregon and California.
RELATED: Wave acquires Cascade Networks to boost West Coast fiber network reach
Wave has delivered gigabit service to Seattle-area business and residential customers since 2008 and has been expanding its network organically and through targeted acquisitions. Cascadelink is the company’s 22nd acquisition to date.
By becoming part of Wave, which plans to invest to further accelerate growth of the companies’ combined gigabit services for both business and residential customers in Seattle and beyond, Cascadelink will gain more resources to further its reach.
The acquisition will complement Wave’s current network footprint with deeper assets in the Seattle market.
“We have known Cascadelink for some time because they are in our neighborhood,” said Harold Zeitz, president and COO of Wave, in an interview with FierceTelecom. “We decided to join forces and acquire Cascadelink, and it really expands our offering of Gigabit fiber to these MDUs.”
Scaling building locations
While Wave has installed fiber into a large amount of buildings in California, Oregon and Washington, Cascadelink will give it a deeper footprint in Seattle.
“Being a provider of gigabit fiber services to residential customers in Seattle, we have also expanded our WaveG offering in Seattle and San Francisco,” Zeitz said. “Cascadelink is in Seattle where we initially started our WaveG service.”
One of the key elements of this acquisition is that it will complement the number of MDUs Wave has on its network. Specifically, Wave will get access to an additional 100 MDU buildings. The vast majority of these buildings are new to Wave.
“We are really getting more buildings that are already offering this service and they also have a pipeline of new buildings they are ready to turn up as well,” Zeitz said. “It’s really a breadth of offering.”
Besides offering a greater depth of locations, Cascadelink’s customer base will benefit from a broader set of support tools and capabilities.
“Because of our size and scope we’re able to offer a deeper range of support services to the customer,” Zeitz said. “We also have the ability to expand at a faster rate because of our access to capital.”
Smooth transition ahead
As Wave moves forward with its acquisition of Cascadelink, the service provider said the transition plans will not impact current Cascadelink customers.
Similar to other acquisitions Wave has made in recent years, all of Cascadelink’s Seattle-based employees have joined Wave.
“One of the important things with Wave is we generally bring the entire team on board,” Zeitz said. “This is another case where we loved the team and the entire team is coming on board.”
Interestingly, Cascadelink is offering a similar gigabit broadband service priced at $79 a month.
Stopping short of citing any new acquisitions, Zeitz said that Wave is always looking at other assets and methods to expand its reach.
“We’re continuing to build at the same pace in terms of fiber,” Zeitz said. “In the case of Cascadelink it was about acquiring more buildings versus more fiber so it was a way to step function our offering.”