TNCI To Buy Pac-West, PointOne Out of Bankruptcy

By Khali Henderson

TNCI Operating Company LLC announced Tuesday that it plans to buy Unipoint Holdings (UPH), which includes wholesale service provider Pac-West Telecomm Inc. and wholesale/retail IP service provider PointOne, out of bankruptcy. The acquisition is expected to close the week of Sept. 9.

TNCI will operate these  companies under the TNCI brand. Email and website domains will  redirect to TNCI upon completion of integration.

Pac-West and UPH (doing business as PointOne) merged in 2011. UPH  filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 28.

Acquiring companies out of bankruptcy appears to be a strategy for TNCI’s new owners. TNCI Operation Company was formed by Garrison Investment Group and Blue Casa Telephone when the companies acquired Trans National Communications International Inc. out of bankruptcy in May.

Prior to that, Jeff Compton (now president and CEO of TNCI), along with a silent partner, acquired the assets of Blue Casa Communications Inc. out of bankruptcy in 2011.

In a March 2013 interview with Channel Partners, Compton said Blue Casa and TNCI were the first acquisitions in what he plans as a rollup strategy to create a national player. At the time, he said he had his sights on a third, which most likely was the UPH assets.

Founded in 1998, PointOne provides business and residential communications services, IP peering, unbundled VoIP network elements, direct Internet access, virtual private networks, virtual network elements, origination, termination, toll-free, and other cloud-based services.

Founded in 1980, Pac-West offers origination, termination, managed modem, co-location, database, and transport services to carriers on a wholesale basis.  Pac-West’s Telastic division offers cloud-based network components, operational systems and white-label applications that can be delivered as fully-managed, self-managed or as infrastructure application services.

In a press statement, TNCI said the acquisition of Pac-West et al is meant to boost TNCI’s position on the West Coast, increasing its network footprint in the nine states in the region. TNCI said it also will leverage the Pac-West Telastic hosted PBX solution to increase the quality of the premium services it delivers to its current customer base.

This acquisition adds to the robustness of TNCIs network and the stability of the company, placing us on the path to becoming a national telecommunications Tier 1 provider of retail and wholesale services,” said Compton in a press statement.  “TNCI will continue the benchmark network Pac-West has built on the West Coast supported by our unmatched industry expertise.”

TNCIs solutions include business VoIP, local phone services in 48 states, long-distance, MPLS, dedicated Internet access, and more.