Brightspeed, a broadband and telecommunications service provider, is establishing its headquarters in Charlotte, while also prepping for a multistate expansion.
The company will lease more than 27,000 square feet in Vantage South End's east tower, which is expected to deliver in May. Vantage South End is a 635,000-square-foot development by The Spectrum Cos. with two, 11-story towers. The west tower delivered in 2021, housing LendingTree Inc. (NASDAQ: TREE), Grant Thornton and GCG Wealth Management, among others.
Brightspeed plans to move into its office in the fourth quarter. It did not provide an investment cost for the upfit.
Brightspeed, which launched in late 2021, expects bring 100 to 150 jobs here, primarily in professional services and corporate roles, said Chris Creager, chief administration officer at Brightspeed. The office will operate on a hybrid model. It will house the legal, marketing, finance and human resources divisions.
Creager, who will relocate from Arizona, said the team looked at several markets to establish its headquarters, including Atlanta and northern Virginia. Charlotte won out for multiple reasons — availability of tech talent, easy accessibility and growing infrastructure, and real estate. He said Brightspeed chose South End specifically because of the energy and how it reflects who the company is. The team also considered locations in uptown, Ballantyne and by the airport.
Establishing a headquarters here is part of a larger expansion project. Brightspeed, with $2 billion from Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO), plans to acquire network assets in 20 states from Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) and build fiber-optic connections for underserved areas. The $7.5 billion deal is set to close in the third quarter. Upon closing, Brightspeed will be a separate operation owned by Apollo.
"When you look at what's happened over the past two years with the pandemic, it sort of underscores this is a smart thing to do," Creager said. "We think it's a great growth opportunity. It's a long-term growth opportunity. It's not something that you can build quickly or cheaply."
The 20-state footprint stretches across the Midwest, Southeast and portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It connects about 6.5 million households and roughly 700,000 to 800,000 businesses, Creager said. However, it is not economically feasible to reach them all. Brightspeed instead has a goal to reach about 3 million of those underserved households over the next four to five years, he said.
Brightspeed will collaborate with engineering and construction firms to install the new network, replacing copper cables from legacy operations.
New internet speeds will reach at least 1 Gig, Creager noted. The company is also hoping for additional funding from the Biden administration's Build Back Better infrastructure plans.
"We see tremendous opportunity for Brightspeed and share a vision for bringing a faster and more reliable fiber-optic network and next-generation connectivity to millions of households across the country. We have an incredible team in place that knows how to execute, and this is another important step leading up to the planned network build,” Aaron Sobel, a partner at Apollo, said in a statement to the Charlotte Business Journal.
Brightspeed will have an aggressive build-out schedule, starting with North Carolina, Creager said. It has already identified suppliers and ordered the materials it needs for the next year — an effort to avoid supply-chain issues. He said Brightspeed is also planning to do some network preparations before the Lumen deal closes.
With Lumen's team, there will be about 4,000 total employees, Creager said.
Brightspeed's leadership team comes with decades of experience. Bob Mudge is chief executive, and Tom Maguire is chief operating officer. This team, including Creager, helped build out Verizon's fiber-based Fios service.
"We've done this before, we've learned some lessons in how we've done it before, and we're excited about the ability to do this again," Creager said.
