Midco is a midwestern service provider that offers broadband via hybrid fiber coax (HFC) cable, fiber-to-the-home, and fixed wireless access (FWA). It serves 490,000 homes and businesses in 400 communities in Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
This week, Midco announced that it sold its tower portfolio to K2 Towers. The two companies did not reveal the monetary amount of the transaction nor how many towers were involved.
But Steve Bruch, senior director of corporate development at Midco, said the company was “completely exiting” the tower business.
He said the towers were deployed over the years to not only support Midco’s FWA service but also, in earlier years, to support its video business. Midco is a 92-year-old company.
Bruch said, “We want to make sure that we, as a company, focus on our core business which is broadband, providing the best broadband experience and video and phone. And towers were adjacent to that.”
Midco also sold the towers for financial reasons. The sale allows it to reduce its general debt, which is attractive given the currently high interest rates.
Instead of owning the towers, Midco will lease them from K2 Towers, a company based out of Ohio. The towers are located in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
Midco still needs access to the towers to provide FWA service — part of its commitments when it won $39 million in Connect America Funds (CAF II) from the government in 2018.
Bruch said that for its FWA service, Midco uses both licensed and unlicensed spectrum across multiple bands. It owns 269 priority access CBRS spectrum licenses, which it purchased at auction in 2020 for $8.84 million.
The company is also eyeing all the activity related to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deploying (BEAD) funds. Its fixed network is currently a mix of fiber and HFC, which is upgraded to Docsis 3.1. It’s considering its future network architecture in light of the government’s willingness to subsidize fiber buildouts to close the digital divide.