Formerly LTD Broadband, GigFire continues to expand its operations
ISP Gigfire, formerly LTD Broadband, has acquired Illinois-based Rural Comm and now serves 10 states.
Rural Comm is based in Farina, Illinois, and GigFire said that the acquisition adds thousands of customers to its subscriber base.
GigFire already operates a footprint of 60,000 square miles across the Midwest from Minnesota and the Dakotas to Tennessee and Missouri, with a hybrid broadband network that relies on both fiber and 60 GHz spectrum to provide service. GigFire’s founder and CEO Corey Hauer said in May that the company had plans to build fiber-to-the-premises in 300 cities and was updating 2,500 towers with gigabit-capable equipment.
The company said in a release that the Rural Comm acquisition “marks an important milestone for GigFire’s expansion plans in Illinois.” GigFire said that it plans to upgrade infrastructure to gigabit-speeds and build out FTTH in more than 150 towns and cities across the state.
“We are excited about our acquisition of Rural Comm,” said Corey Hauer, CEO at GigFire. “We look forward to growing our footprint in Illinois and transforming the network to offer gigabit speeds. We were fortunate to acquire great talent through this acquisition and are elated to welcome them to the GigFire team. We will continue to hire local talent in the area to further expand our team for our ambitious FTTH expansion plans.”
You might remember LTD Broadband as a surprise winner in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction. RDOF provides $9.23 billion in subsidies to be doled out over a decade, in support of high-speed rural broadband deployment. LTD Broadband had won preliminary RDOF awards worth $1.32 billion and was largest winning bidder in the auction, despite being a “relatively small fixed wireless provider before the auction,” as the FCC put it. The FCC ultimately rejected LTD Broadband’s application for the work in its post-auction analysis of winners, saying that the company “failed to demonstrate that [it] could deliver the promised service.” (Starlink, which had not yet launched commercial service at the time of the auction but still won nearly $900 million in RDOF subsidies, received similar treatment.)
