Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Lightower lines up $380M credit facility

By Rodney Brown

Boxborough’s Lightower Fiber Networks LLC has landed a new $380 million credit facility, using GE Capital Markets of Norwalk, Conn., as joint bookrunner and joint lead arranger on the deal.

The financing was described as being “significantly oversubscribed” in a release from GE Capital Wednesday. Lightower is a metro fiber and bandwidth service provider that is backed by Pamlico Capital, M/C Venture Partners and Ridgemont Equity Partners.

Last month Lightower was chosen by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute to supply the MBI’s new rural broadband deployment in western Massachusetts with access to its fiber network to give it access to the Internet. Under the agreement, MBI will lease fiber from Lightower on a separate pair of lines to connect the MassBroadband 123 network to a primary Internet access point in Boston.

In January 2011, Lightower entered into a license deal for essentially all of the fiber optic network capacity of NSTAR Communications Inc., a unit of Boston-based energy company NSTAR. The deal included fiber optic backbone routes and fiber connection to many buildings in downtown Boston and the Greater Boston area.

Lightower acquired Open Access Inc., a metro network and communications services provider based in Farmingdale, N.Y., in December 2010 for an undisclosed amount. That gave it access to more than 230 commercial buildings and data centers throughout Long Island and the greater New York City region.