Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., or Zayo Group, is a privately held company headquartered in Denver, CO, U.S. with European headquarters in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, England. The company provides communications infrastructure services, including fiber and bandwidth connectivity, colocation and cloud infrastructure. Zayo's primary customer segments include wireless carriers, national carriers, ISPs, enterprises and government agencies. Zayo Group was built largely through acquisitions; it took over thirty companies from 2007 to 2014, including

AboveNet AboveNet was a provider of high Bandwidth (computing), bandwidth telecommunication circuits primarily for large corporate enterprises and communications carriers in 17 markets in the United States and 4 markets in Europe. Its private optical networ ...

and 360networks. The company completed an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

of stock raising $600 million in 2014. In 2020, Zayo Group was taken private by global investment firms

EQT AB EQT AB is a Swedish global investment organization founded in 1994. Its funds invest in private equity (EQT Private Capital Europe & North America), infrastructure (EQT Infrastructure), real estate (EQT Real Estate), growth equity, and ventur ...

and Digital Colony Partners in a deal valued at $14.3 billion.

Founding and acquisition history

Zayo was founded in 2007 by Dan Caruso, John Scarano and Matt Erickson as a

Delaware corporation The Delaware General Corporation Law (sometimes abbreviated DGCL), officially the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (Title 8, Chapter 1 of the Delaware Code), is the statute of the Delaware Code that governs corporate law in the U. ...

. In 2007, Zayo acquired Memphis Networx, VoicePipe, Onvoy Inc, PPL Telcom and Indiana Fiber Works. In 2008, Zayo acquired Columbia Fiber Solution, Adesta Communications assets, two sets of fiber assets from Citynet, two sets of fiber assets from Northwest Telephone, and CenturyTel Regional Markets. In 2009, Zayo acquired FiberNet Telcom Group, Inc. In 2010, Zayo acquired AGL Networks, American Fiber Systems, and Dolphini's Cummins Station data center and colocation services. In 2011, Zayo acquired MarquisNet data center business in Las Vegas, and 360networks. In 2012 Zayo acquired

, FiberGate, Arialink, US Carrier Telecom, First Telecom Services, and Maryland-based Litecast/Balticore. In 2013, Zayo acquired Austin-based data center operator Core NAP, Access Communications, Midwest-based dark fiber operator FiberLink, and Corelink Data Centers. In 2014, Zayo acquired Dallas-based data center operator CoreXchange, French network operator Neo Telecoms SAS and UK-based Geo Networks. In 2015, the company acquired Latisys, IdeaTek Systems and Viatel. In 2016, Zayo acquired a new Dallas, TX data center from Stream Data Centers, Clearview International and Allstream, Canada's main facilities-based inter-exchange carrier which has its roots in the railway telegraph business CNCP Telecommunications. Zayo has completed 39 acquisitions. On November 30, 2016, Zayo Group Holdings Inc said it would buy smaller rival

Electric Lightwave Electric Lightwave, formerly known as Integra, was a privately owned provider of fiber-based, carrier-grade networking, communications and technology solutions, headquartered in Vancouver, Washington Vancouver ( ) is a city on the north ba ...

for $1.42 billion in cash to expand its fiber network on the U.S. West Coast. In November 2017, Zayo purchased Spread Networks, a company that operated an 825-mile-long fiber route connecting New York and Chicago. In January 2018, Zayo announced they would be acquiring Optic Zoo Networks, a Vancouver, BC based fiber operation. In May 2019, Zayo announced an agreement to be acquired by

and Digital Colony. The deal to take Zayo private was completed in March 2020. In January 2022, Zayo announced they would be acquiring QOS Networks from majority owner M/C Partners. In November 2023, Zayo announced the acquisition of a Stuttgart-based fiber infrastructure and network services company, Globalways GmbH. In February 2024, Zayo announced the appointment of telecommunications executive Nikos Katinakis as its new Chief Technology Officer. In March 2024, Zayo announced its partnership with Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) developer Netskope for its Managed Edge services. On March 13, 2025, Zayo announced the intended acquisition of

Crown Castle Crown Castle Inc. is a real estate investment trust and provider of shared communications infrastructure in the United States headquartered in Houston, Texas. Operating with 100 offices worldwide, its network includes over 40,000 cell towers and ...

's fiber solutions business for $4.25 billion.

Onvoy spinoff

On June 13, 2014, Onvoy spun off from Zayo Group Holdings. On June 16, 2014, Onvoy LLC acquired the assets of Vitelity, a

voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

provider based in

Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

. On September 3, 2015, Onvoy LLC acquired Broadvox Communications, a

competitive local exchange carrier A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) is a North American telecommunications provider classification that emerged based on the competition model of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the United States. The act required the previously esta ...

VoIP service provider for business telecommunications.

Network and services

Zayo owns a fiber network that spans more than 130,000 route miles in North America and Europe. Zayo operates a Tier 1 IP network, with settlement-free peering with all other Tier 1 providers. Zayo's services include dark fiber,

wavelengths In physics and mathematics, wavelength or spatial period of a wave or periodic function is the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. In other words, it is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same '' phase'' on ...

SONET Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting diodes ...

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

, SD-WAN, IP services, colocation, wireless backhaul and

small cell Small means of insignificant size. Small may also refer to: Science and technology * SMALL, an ALGOL-like programming language * ''Small'' (journal), a nano-science publication * <small>, an HTML element that defines smaller text Arts and ...

References

{{Reflist, 30em American companies established in 2007 Telecommunications companies established in 2007 2007 establishments in Colorado Companies based in Boulder, Colorado Telecommunications companies of the United States Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange 2014 initial public offerings Private equity portfolio companies 2020 mergers and acquisitions Tier 1 networks