The Name Game at Channel Partners Expo: 25 Years of Channel Changes
M&A has been part of the channel since its beginnings. We look at 16 examples from our own expo hall.
April 8, 2022
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In April 2008, Covad (for combined voice and data) Communications was acquired by private equity firm Platinum Equity. In 2010, Platinum sold Covad to U.S. Venture Partners which merged Covad and Speakeasy with MegaPath.
The gentleman third from the left is Andrew Pryfogle, then vice president of sales for Covad. Today he is founder and CEO of CX Effect and will be a featured speaker at Channel Partners Conference and Expo.
Following its founding in 1996, MegaPath spent several years acquiring other vendors. In 2010 it merged with Covad and Speakeasy. Eight years later, it was acquired by cloud service provider Fusion Connect.
When Arunas A. Chesonis founded telecommunications company Paetec in 1998, he created its name from the initials of the first names of his wife and four children. After 12 years of acquiring other companies, Paetec itself was acquired by Windstream Communications in 2011.
Founded in 1993 as UniDial, Lightyear experienced financial difficulties from its inception. On April 1, 2013, after posting a net loss of $2.3 million for 2012, the company announced it was looking for a buyer. That buyer turned out to be Birch Communications which subsequently dissolved and liquidated the company. (And, as mentioned before, Birch was acquired by Fusion Connect in 2018.)
Founded as RCN Corp. in 1993, the company spent 17 years acquiring other internet providers. In 2010, after being acquired by ABRY Partners, it was combined with other acquisitions and relaunched as Sidera Networks. Two years later, Sidera merged with Lightower Fiber Networks. Lightower was purchased by Crown Castle in 2017.
Founded in 2004, Fonality was acquired by NetFortris in 2017. The consolidation created a company with operating centers in three countries providing services to more than 11,000 customers and 300,000 end users in 41 countries.
Massachusetts-based hosted communications provider DSCI was founded in 2000. In 2016 it was acquired by TelePacific Communications (now TPx) to give them a presence on the East Coast. On April 11, 2017, TelePacific rebranded as TPx and DSCI was fully integrated into the company. The new brand name, logo and presence were debuted at that year’s Channel Partners Conference & Expo.
Launched as a subsidiary of a construction group in 1985, Level 3 went public in 1998 and then spent nearly 20 years acquiring other companies such as Genuity, Broadwing Corp., ICG Communications, Global Crossing and TW Telecom. On Oct. 31, 2016, CenturyLink (now Lumen) announced its intent to acquire Level 3. The deal closed on Nov. 1, 2017.
In March 2016, NETXUSA was acquired by Ingram Micro. The acquisition gave Ingram a strong portfolio of IP communications products from leading technology companies.
In 2007, 11 years after it was founded, ShoreTel went public. Soon after it began acquiring other companies including Agito Networks, M5 Networks and Corsiva. In 2016, the company indicated it was interested in a sale and one year later it was acquired by Mitel.
In 2016, VoIP Logic was acquired by BroadSoft. The company expected the acquisition to contribute approximately $800,000 in revenue that year.
World Telecom Group (WTG), then ranked the #1 technology solutions brokerage in the U.S., was acquired by e-commerce platform developer AppDirect in 2018. WTG was merged with NeoCloud, a previous AppDirect acquisition, to build out a part of the company known as AppSmart.
In 2018, Ribbon Communications closed its $110 million acquisition of Edgewater Networks. The acquisition allowed Ribbon to offer its global customer base a complete core-to-edge product portfolio, end-to-end service assurance and analytics offerings, and a fully integrated SD-WAN service.
After overcoming opposition and numerous delays, T-Mobile completed its $26 billion merger with Sprint in April 2020. T-Mobile expected the enhanced scale and financial strength of the merged companies to drive a planned investment of $40 billion into its network, business and more over the next three years.
After overcoming opposition and numerous delays, T-Mobile completed its $26 billion merger with Sprint in April 2020. T-Mobile expected the enhanced scale and financial strength of the merged companies to drive a planned investment of $40 billion into its network, business and more over the next three years.
There have been a lot of name changes on the Channel Partners Expo Hall floor over the past 25 years. Companies have merged, made acquisitions, transformed and rebranded. In most cases, their DNA remains in play, but their names have disappeared. For example, Alltel had been in business for nearly 75 years when it was acquired by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, which formally dissolved it in 2016.
One Communications, itself the result of a merger between CTC Communications and Choice One Communications in 2006, was officially acquired by EarthLink Business (the result of EarthLink’s merger with Deltacom in 2010) in 2011 and became part of EarthLink Business. (And although its name remains the same, EarthLink Business merged with Windstream in 2017. Windstream then sold a large part of it to Trive Capital in 2019.)
Founded in 1996, Access Integrated Networks expanded largely through acquisitions. In 2007, it acquired Birch Telecom and rebranded as Birch Communications. Growth through acquisition continued until 2018, when Birch Communications was acquired by and disappeared into Fusion Connect.
Level 3 Communications came to be in 1985 and, like Birch, fueled its growth with a number of acquisitions. On Nov. 1, 2017, Level 3 officially merged with CenturyLink (which rebranded as Lumen Technologies in 2020).
M&A is an ongoing dance in the channel and tracking that “brand-dango” can be close to impossible. Still, we thought it would be fun to take a look at what happened to 16 of the booths that appeared on and then disappeared from the Channel Partners Expo Hall floor.
Scroll through the gallery above to see how many of these names from the past you remember.
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