Wide Open West
Wide Open West is the sixth largest cable operator in the United States. The company offers landline telephone, Cable Television, and broadband Internet services. As of March 31, 2020, WOW! has about 838,000 subscribers.
After a 2017 initial public offering, Wide Open West is publicly traded with Avista Capital Partners and Crestview Partners retaining significant stakes.
History
WOW! was founded in November 1996 in Denver, Colorado. After building a network in April 2001, WOW! initially served about 200 people in the Denver area. In November 2001, WOW! purchased Americast, an overbuild system in the Midwest built and operated by Ameritech New Media for an undisclosed amount per subscriber, estimated to have been at a cost of $600 per sub. This purchase opened WOW! to over 310,000 new customers in metropolitan areas surrounding the cities of Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Denver, and Evansville. WOW! no longer serves the Denver market.Avista Capital Partners completed its acquisition of cable operator WideOpenWest from Oak Hill Capital Partners and ABRY Partners. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
In August 23, 2011, Wave Broadband and WOW! announced that they entered into an agreement to purchase substantially all of the assets of Broadstripe LLC, a provider of residential and commercial bundled communications services. On January 14, WOW! completed the acquisition of Broadstripe's cable systems in Michigan.
In April 2012, WOW! purchased Knology, a broadband company, operating in 13 markets. With the merger the combined customer total will be over 800,000.
In June 2014, WOW! sold its cable, Internet and phone systems in the South Dakota markets to Clarity Telecom. Part of the multimillion-dollar deal, worth $262 million, included the markets in Iowa and Minnesota previously served by Knology and PrairieWave Communications. In March 2015 these markets would officially become known as Vast Broadband.
In September 2016, WOW! purchased NuLink, a cable company serving Newnan, Georgia with approximately 34,000 customers at the time the deal closed.
In October 2016, WOW! came to an agreement with Midco to sell its systems in Lawrence, Kansas. These systems currently pass approximately 67,000 homes and businesses in the area.
On June 28, 2017, WOW! officially no longer serves the Lawrence, Kansas area.
On March 6, 2018 WOW! announced that they had deployed DOCSIS 3.1 to 95% of their footprint, one of the first cable operators to reach that near-ubiquitous threshold.
Internet availability by state
| State | Population Covered by WOW! |
| Michigan | 1,856,779 |
| Ohio | 1,506,425 |
| Alabama | 624,286 |
| Illinois | 1,604,922 |
| South Carolina | 260,628 |
| Florida | 804,085 |
| Indiana | 316,534 |
| Georgia | 494,673 |
| Tennessee | 139,600 |