Atlanta-based broadband provider EarthLink, owned by Dallas-based private equity firm Trive Capital, has announced the expansion of its internet service footprint by an additional 19 million households to claim coverage of more than 67 million households, or around 53% of the United States’ total 127.6 million homes. The company’s ‘HyperLink’ branded high speed internet packages are available in the major metro areas of Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas and Seattle, as well as in 37 states overall, with connection speeds ranging up to 1Gbps, having leveraged key wholesale partner relationships with several of the nation’s largest network operators. Earthlink highlights that its connectivity services have ‘no data caps, no [speed] throttling, and are not required to be included in a bundle’ whilst it also foregrounds internet security products.
Trive Capital completed the USD330 million purchase of Earthlink on 3 January 2019 from Windstream. The original incarnation of Earthlink, founded in 1994, merged into Windstream in February 2017, with the latter assimilating most of the company’s fibre infrastructure and wholesale/B2B operations before agreeing to offload the remaining Earthlink consumer ISP division at the end of 2018. As part of the deal, Trive also acquired the assets of associate nQue Technologies.