Alteva was acquired by a rural telco, WVT, which later changed its name to Alteva.
Frontier, Windstream and CenturyLink have there roots as small rural ILECs. Windstream bought data centers, Nuvox (CLEC), and then Paetec. C-Link became a CLEC then bought Embarq (formerly Sprint United) then Savvis and Qwest. Frontier (like Fairpoint) acquired Verizon territories.
The residential telecom market is flat or shrinking. TV cord cutters, landline repalcement, yadda yadda. Lucky for WIND and C-Link that they realized this early and acquired enough Enterprise revenue to offset resi losses.
CLECs original business model was to make a living off of the small business space. It was more profitable than residential.
Gary Kim examines the revenues from Alteva, Frontier, WIND and C-Link. “One other lesson is that transformative measures must be taken early, before the opportunity is foreclosed or made hugely more risky because one is entering a crowded or saturated market.”
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