KMC Telecom Departs Augusta, Ga., Phone-Service Market; Sells to TelCove
Posted on: Friday, 4 February 2005, 21:00 CST
Feb. 5--KMC Telecom is hanging up on Augusta.
The company that provides local and long distance phone service to business customers is selling its $23 million local fiber-optic phone network to Pittsburgh, Penn.-based TelCove.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The sale comes almost 18 months after the Bedminster, N.J.-based KMC Telecom Holdings Inc. announced it was ready to expand its presence in the Augusta market, having completed a two-year restructuring plan that renegotiated more than $1 billion in debt.
Myles Falvella, KMC vice president of marketing, said the entire company is moving from business phone service to wholesaling network space to other phone providers, such as AT&T or Vonage.
"The (local phone) business has always been a solid business for us, but the growth has always been in the wholesale market, and the leadership here decided that's where they want to go," he said.
KMC is selling its 37 local markets, from Florida to Michigan. TelCove is buying 21, including those in Savannah, Ga. and Columbia and Charleston, S.C., and Monroe, La.-based CenturyTel Inc. is buying 16.
"Both companies are fine companies," KMC spokeswoman Susanne Curry said. "They will offer them enhanced services we weren't offering."
The sale, expected to close in the third quarter of 2005, should have little impact on customers.
"It will be a seamless transition for all the valued customers KMC has been doing business with," TelCove spokeswoman Sherry Davis Guth said.
TelCove, which emerged from the bankruptcy of Adelphia Business Services in 2004, is working to become the largest competitive local exchange carrier on the East Coast, Ms. Guth said. The company has an established phone network in Atlanta and plans to connect it to the former KMC networks in Augusta and Savannah.
KMC's entered the Augusta market a year after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated local telephone competition. The act allowed the Baby Bells, such as BellSouth and SBC, to offer long-distance telephone service but required the Bells to sell room on their networks to competitive local exchange carriers, such as KMC and TelCove.
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Source: The Augusta Chronicle
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