Gateway Fiber and WANRack, which both are majority owned by a CBRE Investment Management Fund, are merging.
Fiber-to-the-premises developer and operator Gateway Fiber is based in St. Louis. It was founded in 2019 and serves residential and businesses in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Missouri. The company announced $75 million debt financing late last year.
WANRack, which was founded in 2013, serves school districts and libraries through an E-Rate program and business and residential customers in eastern Kansas through its KWIKOM subsidiary.
The press release says that, together, Gateway Fiber and WANRack will offer a FTTX platform and operate across 25 states. The only detail offered about the merger is that it is expected to close during the first half of this year. The press release does not say how the company will expand from the states it mentions.
“Today, more than half of U.S. households don’t have access to fiber internet, and many school districts lack sufficient bandwidth for their students,” Chris Surdo — the CEO of the new company combining Gateway Fiber and WANRack — said in the announcement.
“As a unified organization, especially with WANRack’s E-Rate offering, we have an exciting opportunity to expand our mission of serving customers and communities across our footprint.”
Gateway Fiber’s move outside of its home territory took a step last spring with the move into Northampton, Massachusetts. At the time, then CEO Heath Sellenriek told Telecompetitor that it was so interested in expanding geographically that it had a “new markets” team.
The new executive team will be from both Gateway Fiber and WANRack. From Gateway Fiber, it will include, in addition to Surdo, Nathan McIntyre (Chief Information Officer); John Meyer (Chief Customer Officer); Jim Rosema (SVP, Customer Operation) and Jason Johns (SVP, Network Deployment).
WANRack alumni are Todd Barfield (Chief Legal Officer); Maria Davis (Chief of Staff); Blake Mayfield (VP, E-Rate Sales) and Shweta Bhatia (VP, Human Resources).
