Investment firm Apollo Global Management unveiled a plan to deploy fiber to 3 million locations across the 20-state ILEC footprint it acquired from Lumen Technologies earlier this year and installed a team of former Verizon executives to oversee the rollout.
Apollo’s $7.5 billion deal with Lumen is set to close in the second half of 2022. Once it does, Apollo said in a press release the ILEC assets will become part of a company called Brightspeed, which will have its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Over the next five years, Brightspeed will invest $2 billion to deploy fiber to millions of locations across the Midwest, Southeast and parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including in areas where fiber hasn’t historically been available.
