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 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 investme ...

, 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 states, 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 wes ...

. After building a network in April 2001, WOW! initially served about 200 people in the Denver area. In November 2001, WOW! purchased Americast, 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 sev ...

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 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,

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 t ...

, 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 ...

. 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. Rob ...

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 U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

. 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. In September 2016, WOW! purchased NuLink, a cable company serving Newnan, Georgia 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 ...

to sell its systems in Lawrence, Kansas. 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 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 for $661 million.

Internet availability by state

Network availability by city

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

History

Internet availability by state

Network availability by city

See also

References

External links