BRISTOL, Va. — Paul Elswick jokingly compares his company’s acquisition of the BVU OptiNet fiber-optic network to the TV show “Gilligan’s Island.”
“We thought it would be a three-hour tour, but we’ve been stranded on this island for about three years,” Elswick said with a laugh Thursday afternoon in a conference room at BVU Authority’s Lee Highway offices.
Thursday marked 909 days since Elswick and his son, Ryan — who co-founded Sunset Digital Communications — publicly announced an agreement to buy OptiNet for $50 million. And it’s been nearly three years since they first expressed interest in the publicly funded network, which provides internet and phone service to a wide swath of Southwest Virginia plus cable TV in the greater Bristol area.
At 6:35 p.m., Thursday the final bank transfer was completed, and Sunset finalized the transaction, according to BVU President and CEO Don Bowman. BVU was officially out of the telecommunications business and passed that torch to Sunset.
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“We are excited. We couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t the best thing for Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee,” Paul Elswick said. “We need broadband to run a new economy on, people need it for education, for medical services, for small business. We just think it’s critical and — for some reason — we were at the right spot at the right time to try to put it together.”
The arrival of ITC Capital brought new energy to the process, Sunset Chief Operating Officer Ryan Elswick said.
“We’d been running a marathon. We were at the leg of the marathon, and all of a sudden we had some fresh runners in and it gave us all new energy,” Ryan Elswick said. “They weren’t held back by the history or the amount of time it had taken, they were just ready to go. That reinvigorated us.”
The Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission was an original funding partner and supports the transition, Executive Director Evan Feinman said in a written statement Thursday.
“The commission is thrilled that, after years of effort, this critical network will be in great hands and growing again. We’re looking forward to working with Sunset and all of our local and regional partners to get thousands more Southwest Virginians online,” Feinman said in the statement.
As part of the deal, the commission received a portion of its investment back.
In addition, the Cumberland Plateau Co. — an OptiNet partner in its four-county service area — voiced its support for Sunset. Securing CPC’s support last year proved to be one of the milestones in the process.
“Today, with the closing of the BVU/Sunset transaction, and with Sunset and ITC becoming CPC’s new partner in the CPC OptiNet, we are extremely excited about the next phase of growth for our system,” CPC Chairman Roger Rife said in a written statement. “We believe we now have partners who share our vision for growth of the network in our four counties to include both business and residential expansion opportunities.”
Potential customers across the region have expressed significant interest in the service, and the new owners say they plan to aggressively try to meet that demand.
“We think we now have the assets in place to scale up to make a big difference in broadband availability in the region. That’s the dream and the vision,” Paul Elswick said. “We have a plan of 34,000 customers within five years, and we hope to exceed that plan. It will be based on demand and clustering of demand — that’s how build-outs will be decided. We’ll get people to sign up and then build to them.”
Their plan includes three products: fiber-optic to the home or business; Sunspots that will offer Wi-Fi in public areas for Sunset customers; and Sunbeam, a point to point service that can offer temporary internet service until fiber can be extended.
“We’ll put that product [Sunbeam] out in areas we can’t get to in the near future to get those people some relief and good bandwidth to reduce the timeline,” Paul Elswick said. “We’re trying to compress the timeline through multiple technologies, but ultimately, we’ll get fiber to the home. People need it. People have been waiting long enough.”
The final closing has required weeks of getting all involved parties to sign all requisite paperwork, which was held in an escrow account. Once all documents had all the required signatures, the transaction began to close.
“This morning, they ran a final checklist that everything was there the bank required and, after that call, the bank started wiring money. When all the money hit the account, ITC started wiring all the money to the affiliated parties. Those parties have released their signatures from escrow,” Paul Elswick said.
Simultaneously, for the past five weeks, Sunset and BVU have worked together to separate the OptiNet components from BVU’s systems and are completing the reintegration of those same systems and components.
Sunset has acquired the OptiNet name, but plans to phase it out, Ryan Elswick said, adding that other former BVU services also will be renamed.
