(Host) A longtime locally owned Vermont Internet and telecommunications company is being sold to an out-of-state firm.
SoVerNet employs about 80 people at offices in Bellows Falls and Winooski.
Company officials say the deal shouldn’t change the way SoVerNet does business in Vermont.
VPR’s Steve Zind reports:
(Zind) SoVerNet’s shareholders have decided to sell the company to Atlantic Tele-Network, based in the Virgin Islands and in Salem, Massachusetts.
SoVerNet was founded in 1995 as a Vermont based Internet service provider. Since then the privately owned company has branched out into the local and long distance telephone business. SoVerNet has about 25,000 customers.
Atlantic Tele-Network is a holding company that owns four other small telephone businesses. Three are located out of the country, the fourth specializes in providing wireless phone service in rural areas.
(Lyons) “All of those companies continue to be operated independently of the parent company, with their own staff, their own management teams and their own resources.”
(Zind) Tom Lyons is President of SoVerNet. Lyons says the company had received other purchase offers. He says shareholders felt that Atlantic Tele-Network will keep SoVerNet intact in Vermont.
(Lyons) “To that extent we became very comfortable with Atlantic Tele-Network as a potential suitor, seeing that they would most likely follow as they have historically, investing further in SoVerNet, and in so doing providing a quality of service to our customers that is just building on what we’ve done.”
(Zind) Lyons says becoming part of a larger business will give SoVerNet access to capital to keep pace with technological changes and increased competition.
(Lyons) “When the competition is coming from some pretty big companies you need to have that much more resources to stay in the game.”
(Zind) Atlantic Tele-Network will pay more than twelve million dollars for SoVerNet. The sale is subject to approval by federal and state regulators.
For Vermont Public Radio, I’m Steve Zind.