Greenwich-based Campus TeleVideo has grown its school-specific Internet service with the acquisition of X-Wires Broadband.
Campus TeleVideo, the d.b.a. of Lamont Digital Systems Inc., is a provider of custom cable TV, data and voice services to more than 220 colleges and universities in 43 states. The company was founded in 1984 by Ned Lamont, chairman of the board at Campus TeleVideo, who, at press time, was running for governor.
“We focus on around the top 1,100 major four-year colleges and universities in the country, with 500 students or more in the dorms,” said Brian Benz, CEO of Campus TeleVideo.
Still a client today, the first Campus TeleVideo customer was Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire. Campus TeleVideo has 36 employees including three that came over from X-Wires.
“The addition of X-Wires under the Campus TeleVideo umbrella allows us to add to our suite of existing ResNet solutions, offering a true one-stop-shop for higher education IT departments,” said Benz.
Benz said within the telecommunication provider college market place, Campus TeleVideo has just shy of a 20 percent share, with the rest being taken up by larger scope providers like Time Warner and Comcast.
The specific terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The deal entailed renaming X-Wires Broadband to X-Wires Communications.
Benz said residential data services, which the acquisition will be enhancing, began as an add-on for higher education clients, but is becoming increasingly complex with issues such as technical support, security, bandwidth management and illegal file sharing.
“The growing trend of schools outsourcing these services allows chief information officers to instead focus on mission critical administrative and teaching technology requirements,” said Benz. “X-Wires will be primarily focused on off-campus student housing, so they can get the same services that they would get on campus. The idea is to offer parallel services in two different markets.”
Sebastian Sorrentino, director of academic and media technology services at the University of Hartford, said the university purchases programming on a three- to five-year contract with Campus TeleVideo.
“They”™ve been great and we”™ve had a great relationship with them,” said Sorrentino. “They installed all the cable systems on campus back in 1991.”
Without wanting to be too specific, Sorrentino said the University of Hartford currently pays for about $100,000 worth of programming every year. Campus TeleVideo typically keeps a service representative in the area of each client.
Benz said as high levels of Internet traffic flow from dorms, it has become more difficult for colleges to handle service abilities in-house. X-Wires is an Internet management, resource and support services company specializing in higher education and other multi-user environments. Benz said the X-Wire acquisition has allowed Campus TeleVideo to offer enhanced video, voice and data solutions.
“For colleges today, there”™s a lot to deal with,” said Benz. “We”™ve always been in the market for new acquisitions for new tool sets that make sense to us.” Benz identified emergency notification and digital finance as two areas of growth in the college telecommunications market.
The 2009 Higher Education Act said colleges and universities had more responsibilities monitoring illegal file sharing.
Ben Anderson, the founder of X-Wires Broadband, has assumed the position of director of data services for Campus TeleVideo and the Xwires division. He and two other X-Wires employees will continue to operate out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where an operations center will remain. The official X-Wires headquarters will relocate to Greenwich.
“After working alongside the Campus TeleVideo team for several years, the time was right for us to unite as communication technology continues to merge and evolve,” said Anderson. “This new entity will allow both to pool expertise and resources, allowing us to offer broader services to both on- and off-campus customers.”
