- The deal is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of 2026
- WOW! aims to continue its ongoing cable upgrades and fiber expansion
- Crestview is now WOW!'s largest shareholder
The dominos just keep on falling with telecom consolidation, with operator WideOpenWest! (WOW!) officially going private. Private equity firms DigitalBridge and Crestview Partners announced Monday plans to acquire the cable company for $1.5 billion.
The deal, expected to close sometime in the first quarter of 2026, aims to help WOW! continue its ongoing cable upgrades and fiber expansion. The company's board of directors unanimously approved the transaction, with Crestview being WOW!'s largest shareholder. The PE firms initially offered to buy WOW! in May 2024, and the operator at the time said it would evaluate the proposal.
"We believe this transaction positions the company to deliver meaningful benefits to its customers and the communities it serves," stated Jonathan Friesel, senior managing director and head of fiber at DigitalBridge in a statement. "We intend to invest in expanding and upgrading WOW!’s networks, adopting new technologies, and ensuring the organization has the resources and support needed to continue delivering fast, reliable internet service and a high-quality customer experience at competitive prices.”
Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, WOW! serves around 4.7 million copper, cable and DSL subscribers in seven states, per BroadbandNow. WOW! is also undertaking greenfield fiber deployments, and now has a total 91,100 greenfield home fiber passings, said CEO Teresa Elder on the company's Q2 earnings call Monday.
"This is exactly the kind of transaction you’d expect when you see the kind of divergence between public and private market valuations," MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett told Fierce. While privately-funded fiber companies are building for "as much as $4,000 per connected home," publicly traded cable companies "are trading for as little as a quarter of that."
"The returns to be had from taking companies private can sometimes dwarf the returns available for building from scratch," he added.
DigitalBridge is somewhat of a household name in the private equity telecom space, investing in companies that operate in the cell tower, fiber and data center spaces. Companies in the firm's portfolio include Zayo, Vertical Bridge, DataBank, Telenet's tower business and more.
Despite economic uncertainty and rising interest rates, telco M&A remains piping hot as both large and small-scale deals continue to crop up.
"Private equity is on a rampage buying smaller ISPs in an endeavor to accumulate more and more to create larger companies to get economies of scale," said Recon Analytics Principal Roger Entner. "There are only winners with transactions like this."
Like its cable peers, WOW! has struggled with legacy broadband subscriber declines due to competition from fiber and fixed wireless access. The operator in Q2 shed 3,900 high-speed data (HSD) subscribers, offsetting subscriber growth in greenfield and expansion markets. Cable giants Charter and Comcast meanwhile posted Q2 broadband losses of 117,000 and 226,000, respectively, with both companies eyeing mobile growth as a way to turn the ship around.
Update 8/12/2025 11:16 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional context and comments from Craig Moffett and Recon Analytics' Roger Entner.