Google Fiber may have started to gigabit revolution in the United States, but for those of us living in cities where Google’s service isn’t available, this doesn’t help us very much. The established market leaders like AT&T and Comcast only bring out their own gigabit service to combat Google Fiber, which doesn’t help the vast majority of Americans that don’t live in a Google Fiber city. That’s where Wave Broadband comes in, as the smaller broadband operator has just raised $130 million to bring gigabit Internet to the West Coast.
Broadband operator Wave has raised $130 million to fund its expansion plans on the West Coast. The debt sale, announced Thursday but finalized after investors were lined up in April, is the first time the company has tapped outside investors since a $1 billion fundraising and refinancing of its existing debt in 2012. In past years, the company would add broadband capacity “at about the rate that we’re able to reinvest [our] profits,” Wave Chief Executive Steve Weed said in an interview. “What’s really different here is we’re accelerating the growth. The opportunity is good enough that we’ve decided to take advantage of the opportunity to grow faster.” Weed, a longtime telecom executive, founded the privately held Kirkland company in 2002 and has since amassed a $2.5 billion broadband network carrying Internet, voice and cable-TV service for 420,000 customers in the Puget Sound area, Portland, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.
