WOW! Expands in OH, MI

Oct. 11, 2017
WOW! (NYSE:WOW) announced the availability of gigabit fiber-to-the-neighborhood Internet services to residents and businesses in Parma ...

WOW! (NYSE:WOW) announced the availability of gigabit fiber-to-the-neighborhood Internet services to residents and businesses in Parma Heights and North Ridgeville in Ohio. WOW!'s activation in both markets follows the company's initial announcement of expansion into Parma Heights and North Ridgeville in June. The company is also expanding its operation in Michigan.

WOW! currently offers residential and business services in Cleveland and Columbus, and plans to continue to expand in Ohio throughout 2017 to bring services to additional communities in the state.

WOW! began the construction of network infrastructure for Parma Heights in March and North Ridgeville last August.

"WOW! has been in the process of bringing 1 Gig services to the Cleveland suburbs since mid-2016," said Greg Argetsinger, WOW! area vice president and general manager. "We're proud to now offer WOW!'s fastest Internet service to over 19,000 customers in both communities."

WOW! residential services are seamlessly bundled to produce the fastest Internet speeds with the TV and phone packages most appropriate to each customer's need. WOW! now offers four residential Internet speeds in Parma Heights and North Ridgeville: Internet 10 - 10Mbps, Internet 100 - 100Mbps, Internet 500 - 500Mbps and Internet 1000, WOW!'s 1Gbps offering - the fastest residential speed in WOW!'s bundles.

Separately, the company announced the availability of services to residents and businesses in Livonia, MI. WOW!'s expansion to Livonia, covering 35,000 residential and business customers, is the company's largest since the company went public in May.

WOW! currently offers residential and business services in Detroit, Grosse Pointe Shores and Mid-Michigan, an area encompassing Grand Rapids and Greater Lansing, and is further expanding to Farmington. Service in Farmington is expected to be operational by the end of 2017.

WOW! began the construction of network infrastructure for Livonia last January. Available Internet tiers in Livonia include 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 500 Mbps.

In other WOW! news, the company is deploying Nokia's (NYSE:NOK) virtualized Distributed Access Architecture to increase the capacity of WOW!'s hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network. The deployment includes Nokia's Unified Cable Access solution, including the Gainspeed Controller, Gainspeed SC-2D Access Node and Gainspeed Video Engine. Once the network is fully deployed, WOW! will be able to eliminate the CMTS/CCAP as a physical box and replace its analog optical transmission with 10 Gbps Ethernet.

Cash Hagen, chief operations officer of WOW!, said: "The Nokia virtualized DAA is a groundbreaking technology that enables us to expand our network faster, deploy services more easily and provide the best Internet experience for our customers. As the first to deploy the technology in our network, we are ready to lead the way in providing a new solution to meet increasing bandwidth demands."