Verizon Fiber Expanding as Bain, Tillman Invest $1.5 Billion in Eaton
Analysts expect more deals ahead for Verizon
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2026 – Two investment firms are acquiring a $1.5 billion stake in Eaton Fiber to expand Verizon broadband.
As part of the deal, Eaton will acquire Ripple Fiber. Eaton plans to expand to more than 1 million locations outside Verizon’s footprint “over the next few years.”
The cash is coming from Bain Capital and Tillman Holdings. Tillman already owns Eaton.
Verizon already had a deal with Eaton in which Verizon would serve customers on the open-access provider’s infrastructure. Verizon was to be the exclusive provider on that network for an unspecified amount of time.
That’s still the arrangement, the companies said in a Wednesday release. Ripple customers will be transitioned to Verizon’s platform “over a period of time” after the deal closes, which is expected later this year.
The companies didn’t disclose the amount paid for Ripple or the size of its network, but New Street Research estimated the ISP currently had about 375,000 passings, citing a proprietary dataset.
That would imply something like $900 million for Ripple and $600 million for Eaton’s continued expansion, New Street analyst David Barden wrote in an investor note.
BNP Paribas put the passings number in a similar spot, estimating about 300,000 passings at the end of 2025.
Analysts expected Verizon to enter into more deals like this one, or acquire smaller ISPs. The wireless carrier is aiming to pass 40 million to 50 million locations with fiber.
“Given Verizon’s ILEC footprint – including Frontier – only reaches 48mm passings, and the last 4-8mm are surely too rural for a fiber build to pencil out, the new target seemingly implies the company will lean into more out-of-footprint partnership builds,” BNP analyst Sam McHugh wrote in an investor note. “The Eaton deal seems like a template.”
He wrote that “many think” Verizon would simply acquire Eaton eventually rather than see the open-access provider allow more tenants on the network.
Barden wrote, “We continue to believe that Verizon needs to acquire more fiber assets (Brightspeed or perhaps Uniti) to get close to the size of AT&T’s fiber footprint. We expect more fiber deals from Verizon in the coming year or so.”
Verizon and AT&T, which is targeting 60 million fiber passings, are aiming to expand their footprints as quickly as possible to drive convergence, meaning customers subscribing to both fixed and mobile broadband.
To that end, AT&T has a similar relationship with Gigapower, the network it started in a joint venture with Blackrock. Gigapower is aiming for 1.5 million passings nationwide by next year.
Angelo Rufino, a top executive in the Bain division handling the investment, said in a statement that open-access networks like Eaton were a good way of spreading out the high costs of meeting rural areas’ bandwidth demands.
“Higher interest rates and tighter capital markets have constrained supply for standalone fiber-to-the-premise platforms, even as demand for high-quality broadband continues to grow,” he said. “Wholesale fiber platforms have emerged as the most capital-efficient way to close that gap at scale.”
