GCI Closing Quintillion Deal ‘Very Soon’

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5, 2026 – Alaska cable operator GCI is closing its acquisition of Quintillon “very soon,” the company’s CEO said Thursday.

“We expect to close Quintillion very soon,” which is earlier than the company had previously anticipated, Liberty Capital CEO Ron Duncan said on the company’s earnings call Thursday. Liberty Capital is GCI's parent company.

The deal valued Quintillion, a subsea fiber provider in Alaska, at $310 million. Once it closes, GCI will provide a $160 million loan to Quintillion and reimburse up to $50 million in expenses related to a recently completed fiber line stretching 1,200 miles.

Because of the earlier-than-expected closing, GCI will take on some of Quintillion’s planned spending on projects that are still in progress, Duncan said.

“By the middle of next year, all of the upgrade projects should be complete,” Duncan said, “and we should be in a position to start turning on the material redundancy in our network, which will allow us to provide both higher bandwidth and more reliable services to our customers.”

The Federal Communications Commission approved the deal last month. Alaska Communications Systems told the agency it was concerned about even more of the state’s telecom infrastructure being consolidated by one entity, but the agency said commitments from GCI offset potential harms.

GCI told the FCC it would keep in place all Quintillion’s active agreements and pricing tables for the life of the network, and offer open-access service in rural areas.

Subscriber results

GCI lost 900 broadband subscribers in the third quarter, for a total of 154,500. That’s compared to 1,400 lost subs over the same time last year.

On the wireless side, GCI added 1,400 postpaid subscribers in the quarter and lost 1,500 prepaid, for a total of 202,000 wireless lines. The company added 3,300 postpaid and lost 2,700 prepaid in the same period last year.

Like other cable operators, the company is leaning into bundles to mitigate subscriber losses. Duncan said that 43 percent of GCI’s broadband subscribers also took a mobile line, and that 64 percent of the third quarter postpaid net additions were part of a bundle.

Liberty Capital, GCI’s parent company, posted $267 million in revenue and $37 million in free cash flow. The company expects the latter to increase in the next two years as spending on network upgrades comes down.

Duncan said the company would prefer to invest in “new opportunities not related to our core business,” but would buy back stock if cash kept building up.

Cable magnate John Malone is a controlling shareholder in Liberty Capital. The company was supposed to make a $107 million investment in Liberty Latin America, which Malone also has an interest in, but the deal was axed days after being announced in May.

SpaceX competition

Duncan said the company wasn’t worried about competition from SpaceX’s satellite broadband service, or its planned direct-to-device mobile service.

“We believe we are well positioned relative to Starlink from a bandwidth speed, network reliability, and customer service perspective,” he said. “On the wireless front, we do not believe SpaceX can be a viable competitor unless they build out or buy a terrestrial network, and that challenge would be particularly daunting in Alaska.”

GCI has partnerships with SpaceX, including using its satellite service to provide backup connectivity in remote areas and a deal to resell Starlink service to businesses.