Ripple Fiber expands North Carolina fiber reach with the acquisition of BridgeNET Fiber

Focus on consistency

While the company may be changing hands in ownership, key members of BridgeNET's management team will continue to play a role.

Taylor Brown, who previously served as founder and President of BridgeNET, is now the Managing Director of Ripple Fiber's Statesville network.

In his new role, Brown's focus remains consistent—bridging the digital divide for his fellow residents and upholding his values of service and community investment.

Brown said that he founded BridgeNET, one of the area's only fiber-centric providers, as a way to bring broadband opportunities into areas that traditional providers ignored.

"I wanted to bring real fiber internet to a community that the bigger players always seemed to skip over," he said. "We built the company from scratch with a tight-knit team that knew how to permit, bore, splice, and construct a network the right way. Every address mattered, and we earned trust one install at a time."

A matter of scale

The BridgeNET deal is all about scale.

Being part of a larger company like Ripple enables BridgeNET to scale its network reach.

Now fully supported with the capital and corporate oversight from Ripple Fiber, the projected fiber footprint for the City of Statesville is 18,000 passings.

Ripple is not shy about scaling its fiber network via acquisitions.

In May, Ripple announced it would be acquiring HyperFiber. HyperFiber has been installing fiber in parts of Arkansas, Colorado, and Florida. The company's most recent project was in St. Petersburg, Florida, to connect 23,000 homes.

By officially consolidating under the Ripple Fiber brand, Ripple said it has created the structure to support its plan to build 1.2 million new passings across 15 states over the next five years.

In addition to its acquisitions, Ripple Fiber secured a significant expansion of its existing credit facility to $350 million.

Greg Wilson, CEO of Ripple Fiber, told Lightwave in a previous interview that its approach to being in multiple markets differentiates it from the host of other emerging competitive fiber broadband players. This approach enables Ripple to expand into millions of locations, particularly in markets with limited broadband options.  

"Other players typically get boxed in from a territory perspective to grow out the passings, so we have made sure from the start of the business to be on a multi-state strategy," he said.

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