Two incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) in Virginia — Amelia Telephone Corporation and New Castle Telephone Company — will be the property of RiverStreet Management Services LLC under an agreement signed on May 31 with TDS Telecom, current owner of the ILECs.
The deal is based on a stock purchase agreement with RiverStreet. Other financial details about the transaction, which is expected to close during the third quarter of the year, were not revealed.
RiverStreet is a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) and a subsidiary of Wilkes Telephone Membership Corp., an ILEC with roots going back to 1951.
If the deal sounds familiar, it is: In 2015, TDS Telecom sold about 3,000 lines in three North Carolina communities to Wilkes Communications.
The new agreement calls for eight local TDS Telecom field service associates to transfer to RiverStreet.
This is the third divestiture TDS has announced in just the past week or so as it seeks to focus on its core fiber broadband business and stockpile cash for fiber network investment.
Yesterday, TDS agreed to sell its OneNeck data centers to US Signal. A week earlier, T-Mobile agreed to acquire UScellular’s wireless operation for $4.4 billion. TDS is UScellular’s majority owner.
“[W]e look forward to leveraging our combined strengths to continue our fiber expansion into 16 additional counties in Virginia as we work together to foster connectivity on a broader scale,” RiverStreet Networks President and CEO Eric Cramer said in a press release about the TDS deal.
In all, RiverStreet Networks aims at underserved communities in about 70 counties in five states, but is mostly active in North Carolina and Virginia.
The company received a $191.1 million loan from CoBank last November. The funding was aimed at refinancing legacy USDA Rural Utilities Service financing and deploying fiber broadband in rural areas of the two core states.
TDS provides broadband, video and voice service in Tier 2 and 3 markets in multiple states.
