Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., or Zayo Group, is a privately held company headquartered in

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

, U.S. with European headquarters in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England. The company provides communications infrastructure services, including fiber and bandwidth connectivity, colocation and cloud infrastructure. Zayo's primary customer segments include wireless carriers, national carriers,

ISPs An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

, enterprises and government agencies. Zayo Group was built largely through acquisitions; it took over thirty companies from 2007 to 2014, including

AboveNet AboveNet was a provider of high bandwidth telecommunication circuits primarily for large corporate enterprises and communications carriers in 17 markets in the United States and 4 markets in Europe. Its private optical network delivered key network ...

and

360networks 360networks, Inc. was a Canadian-based wholesale telecommunications carrier. The company developed many long-haul fiber optic communications network routes throughout North America, many along railroad rights of way, consisting of both dark fiber ...

. An

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 ...

of stock raised $600 million in 2014. In May 2019, Zayo Group agreed to be acquired by global investment firms EQT Partners and Digital Colony Partners in a deal valued at $14.3 billion.

Founding and acquisition history

Zayo was founded in 2007 by

Dan Caruso Dan Caruso (born July 1, 1963) is an American entrepreneur, investor, co-founder, and former chairman and CEO of Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., a bandwidth infrastructure services company headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. Career Caruso began his c ...

and John Scarano as a Delaware corporation. In 2007, Zayo acquired Memphis Networx, VoicePipe, Onvoy Inc, PPL Telcom and Indiana Fiber Works. In 2008, Zayo acquired Columbia Fiber Solution, Adesta Communications assets, two sets of fiber assets from Citynet, two sets of fiber assets from Northwest Telephone, and CenturyTel Regional Markets. In 2009, Zayo acquired FiberNet Telcom Group, Inc. In 2010, Zayo acquired AGL Networks, American Fiber Systems, and Dolphini's Cummins Station data center and colocation services. In 2011, Zayo acquired MarquisNet data center business in Las Vegas, and

. In 2012 Zayo acquired

, FiberGate, Arialink, US Carrier Telecom, First Telecom Services, and Maryland-based Litecast/Balticore. In 2013 Zayo acquired Austin-based data center operator Core NAP, Access Communications, Midwest-based dark fiber operator FiberLink, and Corelink Data Centers. In 2014, Zayo acquired Dallas-based data center operator CoreXchange, French network operator Neo Telecoms SAS and UK-based Geo Networks. In 2015, the company acquired Latisys, IdeaTek Systems and Viatel. In 2016, Zayo acquired a new Dallas, TX data center from Stream Data Centers, Clearview International and Allstream, Canada's main facilities-based inter-exchange carrier which has its roots in the railway telegraph business CNCP Telecommunications. As of July 2016, Zayo has completed 39 acquisitions. On November 30, 2016, Zayo Group Holdings Inc said it would buy smaller rival

Electric Lightwave Electric Lightwave, was originally formed in 1988, by John Warta, John Rivenburgh, Earl Kamsky and Richard Furnival. The company was initially formed to compete with US West and GTE in the Pacific Northwest. Portland General Electric was an init ...

for $1.42 billion in cash to expand its fiber network on the U.S. West Coast. In November 2017, Zayo purchased

Spread Networks Spread Networks is a company founded by Dan Spivey and backed by James L. Barksdale (former CEO of Netscape Communications Corporation) that claims to offer Internet connectivity between Chicago and New York City at ultra-low latency (i.e. speeds th ...

, a company that operated an 825-mile-long fiber route connecting New York and Chicago. In January 2018, Zayo announced they would be acquiring Optic Zoo Networks, a Vancouver, BC based fiber operation. In May 2019, Zayo announced an agreement to be acquired by EQT Partners and Digital Colony. In January 2022, Zayo announced they would be acquiring QOS Networks from majority owner M/C Partners.

Onvoy spinoff

On June 13, 2014, Onvoy spun off from Zayo Group Holdings. On June 16, 2014, Onvoy LLC acquired the assets of Vitelity, a

voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of speech, voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms In ...

provider based 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 ...

. On September 3, 2015, Onvoy LLC acquired

Broadvox Communications Broadvox is a VoIP service provider for business telecommunications. It offers voice and data network solutions for telecommunications, cable, and wireless carriers, as well as ISPs, ITSPs, Over-the-top (OTT) service providers, MVNOs, and variou ...

, a

competitive local exchange carrier A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), in the United States and Canada, is a telecommunications provider company (sometimes called a " carrier") competing with other, already established carriers, generally the incumbent local exchange carrie ...

VoIP service provider for business telecommunications.

Network and services

Zayo owns a fiber network that spans more than 130,000 route miles in North America and Europe. Zayo operates a Tier 1 IP network, with settlement-free peering with all other Tier 1 providers. Zayo's services include dark fiber, wavelengths, SONET,

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

SD-WAN A software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is a wide area network that uses software-defined network technology, such as communicating over the Internet using overlay Tunneling protocol, tunnels which are encrypted when destined for internal or ...

, IP services, colocation, wireless backhaul and

small cell Small cells are low-powered cellular radio access nodes that operate in licensed and unlicensed spectrum that have a range of 10 meters to a few kilometers. In other words, they are base stations with low power consumption and cheap cost that ...

References

{{Reflist, 30em American companies established in 2007 Telecommunications companies established in 2007 2007 establishments in Colorado Companies based in Boulder, Colorado Telecommunications companies of the United States Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange 2014 initial public offerings Private equity portfolio companies 2020 mergers and acquisitions Tier 1 networks