A CountryWide Broadband, Full Channel Cable deal announced yesterday is the latest example of broadband provider consolidation. St. Louis-based broadband acquisition and management firm CountryWide Broadband Group (CWBG) said it had acquired Full Channel Cable of Rhode Island, operator of a deep fiber network, providing broadband video entertainment, high-speed internet access and telephone services to residents and businesses in Rhode Island’s East Bay area, south of Providence.
Full Channel currently offers up to 320 Mbps internet access on a stand-alone or bundled basis. CWBG is preparing to increase Full Channel’s internet access speeds to up to 1 Gbps and to roll out new video and telephone products to Full Channel’s customers.
CountryWide Broadband, Full Channel Cable Deal
CWBG also announced that it had expanded its all-fiber, i3 Broadband network in the greater Peoria and Champaign-Urbana, Ill. market. Since the acquisition of i3 in 2016 and its Champaign-Urbana network in 2017, CWBG already has grown the i3 Broadband network more than 25 percent with extensions into more than 20 new neighborhoods. i3 Broadband will further expand its all-fiber network in the greater Peoria and Champaign-Urbana areas starting early this year.
“With the addition of Full Channel, and by extending our network in Peoria and Champaign-Urbana, we are continuing to execute on our long-term vision of expanding our footprint and customer base,” said CWBG president and CEO Grier Raclin, in a prepared statement. “We are also rolling out new services to our customers, and offering them more flexible service packages.”
“The CountryWide Broadband Group team brings years of operating knowledge and industry experience to i3 Broadband and Full Channel,” added Bill Luby, partner at Seaport, the equity partner in the deal, in a prepared statement. “We’ve worked closely with them over the past two years as we pursued plans to acquire broadband properties in order to bring high-speed broadband services to consumers in smaller cities normally overlooked by larger telecom companies. We look forward to further acquisitions and growth.”
