WideOpenWest (
doing business as
A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...
WOW!) is the sixth largest cable operator in the United States with their network passing 3,248,600 homes and businesses. The company offers
landline
A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...
telephone, cable television, and
broadband Internet
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
services. As of December 31, 2020, WOW! has about 850,600 subscribers.
After a 2017
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
, WideOpenWest is publicly traded with
Avista Capital Partners
Avista Capital Partners is an American private equity firm headquartered in New York City focused on growth capital and leveraged buyout investments in middle-market companies in the domestic healthcare sector.
History
The firm was founded in 2 ...
and Crestview Partners retaining significant stakes. As of August 6, 2019 Avista Capital Partners sold their shares in the company, leaving Crestview Partners WOW's largest shareholder holding a 37% stake in the company.
History
WOW! was founded in November 1996 in
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
,
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
. After building a network in April 2001, WOW! initially served about 200 people in the Denver area. In November 2001, WOW! purchased
Americast
Americast (stylized americast) was a cable alternative broadcast joint venture of five telephone companies: SBC, BellSouth Corporation, Ameritech Corporation, GTE Corporation (later part of Verizon by 2000) and SNET. The Walt Disney Company's ...
, an overbuild system in the Midwest built and operated by
Ameritech
AT&T Teleholdings, Inc., formerly known as Ameritech Corporation (and before that American Information Technologies Corporation), is an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture. Ameritech was one of the se ...
New Media for an undisclosed amount per subscriber, estimated to have been at a cost of $600 per sub. This purchase opened WOW! to over 310,000 new customers in
metropolitan
Metropolitan may refer to:
* Metropolitan area, a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories
* Metropolitan borough, a form of local government district in England
* Metropolitan county, a typ ...
areas surrounding the cities of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
,
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
,
Columbus
Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to:
* Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer
* Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio
Columbus may also refer to:
Places ...
,
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
,
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
, and
Evansville
Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in S ...
. WOW! no longer serves the Columbus, Cleveland, or Denver markets.
Avista Capital Partners completed its acquisition of cable operator WideOpenWest (“WOW!”) from
Oak Hill Capital Partners
Oak Hill Capital Partners is a private equity firm headquartered in New York City, with more than $19 billion of committed capital from entrepreneurs, endowments, foundations, corporations, pension funds and global financial institutions. Robe ...
and ABRY Partners. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
On August 23, 2011,
Wave Broadband
WaveDivision Holdings, LLC, doing business as Wave Broadband, is an American provider of residential, business, and enterprise class cable TV, broadband Internet, and telephone services to around 455,000 customers in Washington, Oregon, and Ca ...
and WOW! announced that they entered into an agreement to purchase substantially all of the assets of
Broadstripe LLC, a provider of residential and commercial bundled communications services. On January 14, WOW! completed the acquisition of Broadstripe's cable systems in
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
.
In April 2012, WOW! purchased
Knology
WideOpenWest (doing business as WOW!) is the sixth largest cable operator in the United States with their network passing 3,248,600 homes and businesses. The company offers landline telephone, cable television, and broadband Internet services ...
, a broadband company, operating in 13 markets. With the merger the combined customer total will be over 800,000. Knology had previously merged with Valley Telephone Company in 1999, Prairiewave Communications in 2007, Graceba Total Communications in 2008, and Sunflower Broadband in 2011.
In June 2014, WOW! sold its cable, Internet and phone systems in the South Dakota markets to Clarity Telecom. Part of the multimillion-dollar deal, worth $262 million, included the markets in Iowa and Minnesota previously served by Knology and PrairieWave Communications. In March 2015 these markets would officially become known as
Vast Broadband
Vast Broadband is a cable and internet company serving South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota, more specifically the communities of Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Spearfish, Luverne, Marshall, Watertown, Vermillion, Sturgis, Storm Lake, Yankton, Wort ...
.
In September 2016, WOW! purchased NuLink, a cable company serving
Newnan, Georgia
Newnan is a city in Metro Atlanta and the county seat of Coweta County, Georgia, about southwest of Atlanta. Its population was 42,549 at the 2020 census, up from 33,039 in 2010.
History
Newnan was established as county seat of Coweta Coun ...
with approximately 34,000 customers at the time the deal closed.
In October 2016, WOW! came to an agreement with
Midco
Midco (known as Midcontinent Communications until 2016) is a regional cable provider, providing a triple play service of Cable television, Internet and telephone service for both North Dakota and South Dakota, along with much of Minnesota, and s ...
to sell its systems in
Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence is the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas River, Kansas and Waka ...
. These systems currently pass approximately 67,000 homes and businesses in the area.
On June 28, 2017, WOW! officially no longer serves the Lawrence, Kansas area.
On March 6, 2018 WOW! announced that they had deployed
DOCSIS 3.1
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...
to 95% of their footprint, one of the first cable operators to reach that near-ubiquitous threshold.
On June 30, 2021 WOW! stated that it is selling its Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, service areas to Atlantic Broadband (since renamed
Breezeline
Breezeline (previously Atlantic Broadband) is the trade name for the United States operations of Cogeco Communications, constituting the 8th largest cable operator in the United States, based on the number of television service customers served. ...
) for $1.13 billion;
it closed the deal on September 1, 2021.
Also on June 30, WOW! announced the sale of its systems in Chicago; Evansville, Indiana; and Anne Arundel, Maryland to
Astound Broadband
Astound Broadband is an American telecommunications holding company based in Princeton, New Jersey. It was formed on January 24, 2018, with the completion of the $2.36 billion purchase of Kirkland-based Wave Broadband by private-equity firm TPG ...
for $661 million.
[
]
Internet availability by state
Network availability by city
See also
* NebuAd
NebuAd was an American online advertising company based in Redwood City, California, with offices in New York and London and was funded by the investment companies Sierra Ventures and Menlo Ventures.
It was one of several companies which origina ...
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Cable television companies of the United States
Companies based in Englewood, Colorado
American companies established in 1996
Telecommunications companies established in 1996
Economy of the Midwestern United States
Internet service providers of the United States
Telecommunications companies of the United States
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
2017 initial public offerings
1996 establishments in Colorado