WOW! Business continues to make inroads as a disruptive force in the wholesale fiber services space, but the service provider is being choosy about which deals it pursues.
Scott Russell, chief marketing and sales officer for WOW!, told FierceTelecom that the company’s footprint puts it into a good competitive position.
“Our wholesale strategy is about being opportunistic,” Russell said. “There are things that we are strategically set up to do in our footprint to be able to be able to extend our wholesale customers’ networks as they look to expand their reach.”
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Like other cable operators that provide wholesale services, WOW! Business has found success in the wireless backhaul space.
The service provider is currently conducting a fiber-to-the-tower build in Chicago, for example.
For that project, the service provider is building 1,500 miles of dark fiber and sees a number of opportunities to expand in the commercial business market.
“We can overperform at a hyper-local level so we tend to be very selective in how we think about the opportunities that come forward to us in the wholesale space, particularly with the wireless carriers,” Russell said. “We love the wireless carriers and the business they bring us, but we tend to be very hyperlocal with the opportunities versus on a broad geographic basis.
While the allure of dark fiber deals are certainly pressing, the service provider is focused on looking at those builds on a case-by-case basis.
“Again, it’s opportunistic,” Russell said. “There’s places where dark fiber makes a lot of sense for us and other times we’ll pass on those opportunities.”