Accelecom recently named Brad Kilbey as CEO.
Kilbey takes over the reins of the high-speed fiber optics provider, whose network of cables touches all 120 of the commonwealth’s counties.
“If you look at my background… I had the opportunity to participate in a lot of inorganic growth in M&A, so the timing was perfect,” Kilbey recently told me.
He was referring to Accelecom’s October acquisition of Georgia Public Web (GPW), which essentially more than doubled the company’s footprint, while extending the its reach into new markets in five southern states: Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina. The company also started to expand in Ohio in early 2021 by establishing a network point of presence (POP) at a data center in Cincinnati.
The merger with GPW gave the company a current headcount of approximately 80 employees, with about 50 of them living in Kentucky. Its main offices in Kentucky are located at 1700 Eastpoint Parkway in Louisville.
“As Accelecom ramps up new services in the GPW territories and continues to unleash business innovation and economic development in Kentucky, Brad brings vast experience and vision to guide the next phase of the company’s exciting journey,” said Andrew Ancone in a release.
Anocone is the managing director for Australia-based Macquarie Capital, which entered a public-private partnership with Accelecom since 2015 to build a high-speed broadband network across that state. That plan was later named the KentuckyWired plan.
The company is privately owned and fully backed by two infrastructure investors: Macquarie and Swiss-based investment bank UBS. Although it was founded in 2015, it did not start functioning at an operational capacity until 2020.
“From a communications infrastructure perspective, we're uniquely positioned, because we have great access to capital, and we have a low cost of capital to put that capital to work,” said Kilbey, who officially began on Dec. 1.
Out of the project’s $350 million price tag, a majority of the tab was paid for by Macquarie Capital. As we reported in February, the project was completed in 2021, resulting in 3,000 miles of high-capacity fiber-optic cable running through parts of all 120 of Kentucky’s counties.
In addition, Accelecom has customers in more than 100 of the 120 counties. In February, as we reported, that number was at 80. It also has since added approximately 200 more miles of cable in Kentucky since that time. In addition, with the GPW deal, the company acquired 3,600 miles of cables from the state of Georgia alone.
More growth to come
Kilbey is well-versed in the acquisition culture, having come to Accelecom following more than five years at Zayo Group. Formed in 2007, Zayo is a global communications infrastructure provider that has acquired 47 networks to date to “connect and harmonize,” according to the company’s website.
Kilbey’s most recent position at Zayo was senior vice president of global public sector, healthcare, education, transportation and industry. He has spent a majority of his career based in the Washington, D.C. area, having lived there since 1997. He started his career in 1995 as a manager at the telecommunications giant MCI, which was acquired by Verizon in 2006.
He and his family eventually plan to move to Louisville, but they will wait until their youngest son, who is a junior in high school, graduates. Interestingly enough, Kilbey and his wife have another son who is a freshman at the University of Kentucky, majoring in business.
“I would argue that a part of our family is already in Kentucky,” he said.
His career path also includes serving close to 13 years at Level 3 Communications (now CenturyLink) from 2003-15 and a year-and-a-half as vice president of Windstream from 2016-17 for moving to the Zayo Group. In particular, he has extensive service working with both the health care and public sectors — two major growth areas for Accelecom.
Kilbey is replacing David Flessas, who is “looking forward to spending time with his family,” according to a company spokesperson, after stepping down from the role earlier this month.
“I want to thank David Flessas for his leadership in building Accelecom from the ground up as a pre-start-up to become a modern success story for its customers, partners, and employees,” Ancone said in a release.
Added Kilbey: “My predecessor, David, he was a very strong operator, and he built a great platform. I was brought in to help scale that.”
Kilbey spent most of his childhood living in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, but his family comes from a very small town in Northern Ontario in Canada. He said that he could personally relate to what Accelecom was trying to to help improve the overall infrastructure of rural communities, particularly in the areas of health care/telehealth and education.
“What we enable here, and the missions that we support — the enterprises, the institutions — it resonates with me,” Kilbey said. “And I would also argue, it can be the model that we can replicate in a lot of markets throughout the U.S.”
