Astound Broadband is an American telecommunications

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the Security (finance), securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own Share ...

based in

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

. It was formed on January 24, 2018, with the completion of the $2.36 billion purchase of Kirkland-based

Wave Broadband WaveDivision Holdings, LLC, doing business as Wave Broadband, is an American provider of residential, business, and enterprise class cable TV, broadband Internet, and telephone services to around 455,000 customers in Washington, Oregon, and Ca ...

private-equity firm A private equity firm or private equity company (often described as a financial sponsor) is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of a Startup company, startup or of an existin ...

TPG Capital TPG Inc., previously known as Texas Pacific Group and TPG Capital, is an American private equity firm based in Fort Worth, Texas. TPG manages investment funds in growth capital, venture capital, public equity, and debt investments. The firm in ...

. TPG combined Wave with its existing combination of

Princeton Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the Unit ...

-based

RCN Corporation RCN Corporation, originally Residential Communications Network, founded in 1993 and based in Princeton, New Jersey, was the first American facilities-based ("overbuild") provider of bundled cable telephony, cable television, and internet s ...

and San Marcos-based Grande Communications, both of which were acquired on February 1, 2017, in a $2.25 billion deal; TPG bought RCN for $1.6 billion and Grande for $650 million. While TPG held the Internet providers as an unnamed collective unit, they somewhat maintained independence from each other despite sharing resources. TPG then expanded the unit with its purchase of

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

-based enTouch Systems on September 18, 2020, for an undisclosed sum. Less than two months later, Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners announced on November 1 that it would purchase the unit, by then named Astound after a previous name used by Wave in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, from TPG for $3.6 billion along with $4.5 billion in debt through a

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is the acquisition of a company using a significant proportion of borrowed money (Leverage (finance), leverage) to fund the acquisition with the remainder of the purchase price funded with private equity. The assets of t ...

; TPG had explored selling Astound due to the increased demand for Internet bandwidth during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. Astound's expansion continued with its purchase of

San Luis Obispo ; ; ; Chumashan languages, Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. Located on the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly halfway betwee ...

-based Digital West on January 26, 2021, also for an undisclosed sum.

History as Internet service provider

Astound Broadband was a provider of

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television broadcast programming, programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This ...

broadband internet In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide- bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission m ...

, and

telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...

services on the West Coast, and served over 325,000 residential and business customers within communities in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. Astound provided services via their

fiber-optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

network, including high speed internet, digital cable, home phone service, international programming, DVR, HDTV, and TV On Demand. Astound Broadband was part of WaveDivision Holdings, LLC, which is headquartered in

Kirkland, Washington Kirkland is a city in King County, Washington, United States. A suburb east of Seattle, its population was 92,175 in the 2020 U.S. census which made it the sixth largest city in King County and the twelfth largest city in the state of Washington. ...

. On May 1, 2015, Astound Broadband in San Francisco adopted the parent company's name and was rebranded Wave, which offers the same services to the same geographical areas.

References

External links

* Telecommunications companies of the United States Cable television companies of the United States Companies based in Kirkland, Washington 2020 mergers and acquisitions {{US-telecom-company-stub