Bill Major, CEO of FiberLight, the Alpharetta, GA-based regional fiber network operator, joined the company two years ago with a mandate to grow the business. The company’s announcement this week that it has a definitive agreement to acquire Metro Fiber Networks (MFN) is a strategic step in that direction.
MFN, headquartered in Yorktown, VA, is a dedicated fiber provider serving carriers and public institutions in Richmond and Virginia Beach. MFN currently has customers contracted for dark fiber. This transaction is expected to close in Q2 2025, once customary requirements have been met. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Acquiring MFN will add roughly 200 route-miles of high-capacity all-underground conduit and fiber cable between the Virginia Beach cable landing station (CLS) and the QTS data center campus in Richmond. Virginia Beach CLS is a major subsea cable landing station supporting TransAtlantic and U.S.-Latin America traffic.
FiberLight operates a large regional network of nearly 20,000 route-miles and offers both dark fiber and lit wavelength transport services. Most of that network is in Texas and has cross-border connections to Mexico. The company also has operations in the Tampa, FL metro market, the Atlanta area, in Richmond and in the Maryland-D.C.-Virginia corridor from Baltimore to Charlottesville.
With data center overbuilding in Northern Virginia and associated power constraints, however, data center buildouts are moving south from Northern Virginia to cities like Richmond and Atlanta and smaller markets in between.
Major says this situation creates an opportunity for FiberLight to build or buy fiber facilities to connect those markets. That is in line with FiberLight’s current acquisition. Major tells Inside Towers that the company is looking at other “tuck ins” to support a broader regional network along the eastern seaboard. Markets such as Charlotte, Myrtle Beach and Atlanta were mentioned for other potential acquisitions.
Major pointed out that gaining access to the Virginia Beach CLS positions FiberLight well for the expansion of undersea cable routes from the U.S. east coast. He alluded to the prospects that Meta’s Project Waterworth, announced in February, likely will utilize the Virginia CLS which he says handles roughly 70 percent of the TransAtlantic undersea cable traffic. According to Meta, Project Waterworth aims to build the world’s longest and highest-capacity subsea cable system, spanning over 31,000 miles and connecting five continents.
“This transaction marks a significant milestone for FiberLight as we expand our network to reach Virginia Beach, which hosts the largest defense installation outside of the Pentagon and the largest CLS in the U.S.,” Major comments. “The MFN assets are a natural extension of our existing network and will allow us to provide customers with reliable, high-speed connectivity services to various organizations in Virginia.”
FiberLight is owned by a consortium led by global infrastructure investment firm Morrison, based in Wellington, New Zealand, together with co-shareholders Australian Retirement Trust and a managed client of UBS Asset Management.
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
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