Windstream announced its acquisition of Lexcom is now complete. Lexcom is a Lexington, NC based ILEC with approximately 23,000 access lines, about 9,000 high-speed Internet customers and about 12,000 cable TV customers. Windstream purchased Lexcom for $141 million in September 2009.
Lexcom is one of many telecom properties purchased by Windstream in the past few months. Others include D&E Communications, NuVox, and most recently, Iowa Telecom. According to Windstream, Lexcom generated $44 million in revenue, $15 million in operating income and $23 million in operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) in the twelve months ended Sept. 30, 2009.
Would be cool if you linked to the previous acquisition stories in the post.
Windstream does seem to be on a buying spree though. Which is fine, because in most cases their ADSL2+ product is either a better buy or has better performance than whatever internet access the company to be acquired is selling. One notable exception is Iowa Telecom: they have 15/1 ADSL2+ in some markets, though it's fiendishly expensive.
On the other hand, while DBS TV is a good alternative to trying to cram video services over a copper pair (*cough* U-Verse *cough*) Windstream's choice of Dish is far from spectacular and the bundles available on their website don't even provide a discount from Dish's normal packages. That said, I hear the company keeps the cable TV assets of the companies it buys, so folks with cable service aren't going to see it vaporize in favor of satellite access in the near future.
What will be interesting is what WS does when they're done buying all these companies. Granted, the first order of business is to integrate everyone's systems and product portfolios, but then what? Aside from an upload speed bump on 3 Mbps and 6 Mbps DSL tiers (a welcome increase, considering both were at 384 kbps until now) Windstream hasn't touched their internet offerings in a couple of years except for the limited-reach 24 Mbps fiber prmotion. Then again, WS can't go much farther on a single copper pair. So they'll either have to use pair-bonding, which relies on enough pairs being in the ground in the first place, or go all the way to FTTH. Or they could deploy Annex M, offering 1.5 Mbps uploads on their 12 Mbps DSL package, something that would make AT&T look stupid since AT&T's U-Verse product of the same speed is $10 more per month and available on a much more limited basis.
Whatever happens, it'll be interesting to watch.