Sara and I have been terrible about keeping the site updated in the last few weeks. Work has been crazy to say the least but I think we’re going to get a breather that should give us some time to get back to posting new articles and updates.

I am working on a new template for the site and some additional features that will allow people to connect to the website with their Facebook, Google, OpenID, etc. website logins that I hope will increase the interaction with our (few) readers.

Expect a lot of new articles that Sara and I have had in draft form for the last two to three months very soon.

I am trying out some new themes and plug-ins for the website to try to optimize the page for Search Engines (SEO) and streamline the user experience by allowing people to connect with their Facebook, Google, MySpace, or OpenID logins.

If things look out of whack or funky for the next few days just try back later. I’ll make a more detailed post after I have finished all of the updates.

Bye bye happy NuVox/NewSouth circle thing!

Today it is official: Windstream has acquired NuVox. Right now we’ve been told this means business as usual. As I said in my last post, Sara and I are both looking forward to the coming changes and being part of a larger company. One thing is for sure, the NuVox brand will be going away and the new company will officially be Windstream. NuVox came into life with a million other CLECS as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and continued to grow through a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. I think the management team and the people we worked with to build this company are second to none and some of the best in the industry.

We’ve accomplished a lot here in the last eight and a half years, and I expect there will be a period of rapid growth and expansion in the not too distant future. The new company has a much larger footprint and is a financial powerhouse, both of which will position Windstream as a leader in the new markets. With the pending acquisition of Iowa Telecom in the pipe, the company seems poised to compete with the likes of AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Qwest.

Looking back on our time at NuVox and toward the future at Windstream, it doesn’t feel like the last chapter in the NuVox story but the first chapter of a new book. Here are some things about the acquisition I find really exciting:

• Windstream’s annual revenue is now estimated to be approximately $3.7 billion dollars. That number is just mindblowing to me. When I started at NuVox we weren’t even EBIDA positive. 8 years later we are free cash flow positive and netting $565 million in revenue a year with $115 million in operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA). Now our total revenue is just 15% of what they expect the combined company to produce.
• Windstream is investing $20 million into building out their fiber network. This is great, I hope the trend continues as it could make the new company incredibly competitive in the wholesale access market with the huge increase in demand for bandwidth for all applications, mobile in particular.
• Windstream is very excited to be able to sell our products and services. I cannot wait to build out our network to provide them to the entire footprint.
• Working for a company that has traditionally been an ILEC as opposed to NuVox (we were a CLEC) should provide a unique perspective into the other side of the business

I probably won’t post too much specific information (NDAs, etc.) but I will try to keep posting the big news as it comes out over the next few months. Thanks to everyone who has sent us their well wishes over the last few months, Sara and I are very excited to find out what opportunities the next year will bring.

Will & Sara at McPherson Park in Greenville, SC

As of today Sara and I have been married for 9 years! It’s been a long road and I can’t believe all of the things we’ve seen, said, and done. Some days I feel like we’ve always been together and others it feels like no time at all. One thing is for sure, I am the luckiest guy in the world.

On January, 19th 2001 we piled into Sara’s white 1991 Mitsubishi Montero with Ben Chabot and his then fiance Caitlin and drove to the Little Wedding Chapel in Easley, SC. I remember our family and friends packing into the woefully small chapel and laughing with us through the next 30 minutes of comedy gold.

Highlights:

• Meeting the minister minutes before the ceremony in his bright yellow plaid suit and matching bowtie; (un)fortunately(?) he wore a robe for the ceremony
• Sara’s mother thinking that her father had already, “given away the bride,” but not heard it as he is somewhat deaf and whispering very loudly while crouching and tugging on him to sit down
• Sara and I being forced to stand and bend uncomfortably over the kneeling bench we asked be removed several times. That’ll show them! We’ll stand and bend over you uncomfortably!
• The operatic rendition of the lords prayer with trademarked country twang played on a cassette deck that had the entire chapel in peals of laughter by the end
• My botching of my vows, “with this ring I be wed…,” WTF was I thinking?
• Being trapped with my Grandmother Byrd during the reception who I believe was still convinced that I was either gay or had impregnated Sara and was forced to marry her; I still cannot understand how these conflicting ideas can occupy the same place in anyone’s head…
• Sara being trapped during the reception with a mutual friend who had been gone all summer and was desperately in love with her
• Sara’s Dad is the spitting image of Norm Abrams. I’m not kidding. My Grandfather Wayne is quite the furniture builder and artist and was convinced we had no small celebrity on our hands and felt compelled to introduce himself and discuss his love of the New Yankee Workshop. Both men are slightly hard of hearing so the conversation went something like this:

Grandfather Wayne: “I’m Hugh, Will’s grandfather.”
Sara’s Dad: “No, I’m Sara’s dad, Jerry.”
Grandfather Wayne: “No, I’m Hugh, Will’s grandfather.”
Sara’s Dad: “No, I’m Sara’s dad, Jerry.”

x20 or so until Sara walked up and straightened them out…

• Being pelted by birdseed so hard it left marks and Sara shaking birdseed out of her over styled hair for about a week after
• Leaving the wedding with Ben and his fiance to head home for champagne
• Champagne had been left in the freezer by someone and exploded into champagne slushy
• Going to Nick’s Tavern to drink with some friends when your freezer is full of champagne slushy
• Getting almost too drunk to consummate your marriage and finally managing it way too late above the heads of your best friend and his fiance who for some reason were spending the night

One would marvel that the marriage lasted the first night. As I read this back to Sara now no one is more surprised than her that we made it past that first night when at my parents dropping off my Dad’s tux and she finds out Ben and Caitlin are spending the night. Our wedding night. Good god, what was I thinking. Fortunately our honeymoon was much better and salvaged my bumbling during our wedding. We spent 4 incredible days at Hidden Mountain Resorts in Sevierville, TN. Our ride up to Sevierville was treacherous and beautiful. It started snowing in the mountains of NC and things got cold and icy very quickly. The poor Montero had a time on the mountain hills and when we finally got checked in we were pretty much snowed in. It was a great time and just about the only real vacation we’ve had since we’ve been married. The few times we made it out were for a few nice dinners and games at some arcades near Pigeon Forge.

At any rate when we got home it was back to work and things weren’t peachy. Sara and I were poor and it sucked. We were living in Government housing and barely making livable wages. We both had insurance thanks to my job but things were uncertain as the company had just filed Chapter 11. Sara was working for her parents at their Frame Shop and making more than I was. I decided things needed to change and started looking for new work. Fortunately for me an old classmate from High School IM’ed me day and told me he could get me a job in Greenville, SC with Trivergent. Trivergent was a communications company that was having financial problems but were in the process of being acquired by Gabriel Communications in St. Louis, MO. I figured moving from a low paid job with no security to a higher paid job with slightly less security was a no-brainer and we packed up and moved to Greenville. Sara’s drive got shorter and I walked to work from a cheap condo we rented downtown Greenville on West Earle St.

During the early years of our marriage I honestly can’t understand why Sara stayed with me. Maybe she saw there was some raw potential there but at 21 I was insufferable. I thought I knew everything and never thought for a second before making it known. I’m convinced I drove away some people I was really close to because of my attitude. Fortunately she worked through the process of growing up with me and I learned the world wasn’t black and white and it was possible to see things from another perspective. We had long conversations about what we could do to improve our relationship. Sometimes we’d stay up and talk about it all night. (We did this about two weeks ago in fact!) At some point I decided I wanted to be a better person for her and started work on improving my less than desirable qualities. It’s not been easy but compromise is the name of the game. If you love the person you’re with don’t you want to be worthy of their love? Don’t you want the last thought in their mind when they fall asleep that they’re glad to be with you and not, “That asshole forgot to fold his clothes again?”

Things worked out and the new company became NuVox, Sara started working there, I was rapidly promoted, we both learned an incredible amount about telecommunications, the Internet, and mergers and acquisitions, met some terrible people and some of the best people we’ve ever known. In the last 9 years we’ve started two failed businesses but are still trying, moved five times, bought a house, bought two new cars, been introduced to the amazing Siamese breed, enjoyed a short time with our first Siamese, lived a melancholy and sometimes downright painful year and a half with our second Siamese and his bout with lymphoma, learned to live with Sara’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis, taken each other to the emergency room, and so much more than I could ever cram into one sentence. What have we learned from all of this?

When I look back on the last 9 years I’d say that demolishing the typical husband and wife roles has played the biggest part in keeping both of us happy. She’s my best friend, my confidant, my partner, my love. Not my cook, maid, chauffeur, dishwasher, or slave. I can wash the dishes or cook dinner and she can work 80 hours a week and bring overtime when we need it. I don’t own her and she doesn’t own me and neither of us does these things because it’s, “the husband’s/wife’s job.” We do them because they have to be done and we understand how it feels when you’re doing them by yourself and the other person doesn’t help.

At the end of all of this exposition I can sum up the key to our successful marriage in one sentence. This is not all about you; don’t be a selfish ass. I think far too many people forget that in a marriage you can’t always control what the other person is going to do or think or feel and you have to be able to truly understand and live with that, rational or irrational it may be. It’s all about the patience and willingness to learn, understand, and grow with your partner.

I know you all probably read this far hoping that you’d get some quick and easy tips to make things better at home so I won’t stiff you. For 9 years here are 9 things that have made things immeasurably less tense in the evenings:

1. Mint – Until the end of 2008 Sara managed the finances by herself. She did a great job on her own but she couldn’t say no to me and I had no idea what our finances looked like. At the end of 2008 when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis she made me sit down and look over them with her and I promised I would be more involved so she wouldn’t feel like, “mean mommy,” when she had to say no. Mint let us import all of our financial accounts into one portal where we could quickly and easily extrapolate where our money was going and what we needed to do to get our finances working better for us. If there’s a better tool out there I haven’t seen it yet.
2. Dishwasher – Moving into a place with a dishwasher eliminated the biggest point of contention between us. Who’s doing the dishes? You might not think about it much but consider this; doing the dishes for a regular meal that you cook for two people takes just about as long as when you cook for 4-5. You typically use the same amount of pans, skillets, measuring cups, etc. as you would for cooking a larger meal and these are the things that take the longest to clean. Buying a dishwasher gets you back 45 minutes to an hour of time every evening you’d otherwise spend washing dishes after a meal. Over the course of a year that’s about 15 days of time each year you could be doing anything else.
3. Keeping each others secrets – If I told you my wife would kill me…
4. Cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, and more cats – They are ridiculous, loving, fun, and they lower your blood pressure. You can also blame them when someone passes gas.
5. CatGenie – Seriously, with all those cats, who really wants to scoop litter? Let them use their own cat toilet.
6. Working Cars – So many other things are broken, do you really want to be stuck in the house when your air conditioning is broken because you wanted to save $500 at the dealership?
7. Comfortable Bed – It’s hard to be mad at each other when you’re falling asleep in a comfortable bed
8. A great sense of humor, especially about each others’ neuroses
9. Common Enemies – Fighting against a common enemy or problem is the first step towards working together!

EPILOGUE FROM SARA, WHO JUST DISCOVERED THAT SOME OF HER FAMILY MEMBERS READ THIS.

Hi everyone! Silly Will — I’m actually a virgin and have never even tasted alcohol. Love you!

I think there are some missing cats in here somewhere...

Well it’s that time of year again, namely the new year. Each year Sara and I go through our stuff and find things that fit into either the Goodwill or eBay pile depending on what it is. If we think we can make some money on it then it goes in the eBay pile otherwise it ends up in a box bound for Goodwill. So far this year we’ve already made about $500 dollars in donations to Goodwill according to their pricing sheet and I’ve got about 30 auctions going on eBay with many more to come.

My favorite part of all of this is not a tax write off or the pay off from getting rid of stuff we didn’t even know we have (we made over $1,000 dollars on eBay auctions last year) but eliminating the clutter from our lives. It’s very cathartic to eliminate 15 – 20 boxes of clutter from our house and all of the sudden be no longer owned by our belongings. Last year Sara and I did some late spring / early summer cleaning and found 25 plastic bins like you see in the pictures there in our attic and closets and decided it was time to make some changes. Last April / May our office was full to the ceiling with these plastic bins and our spare bedroom was full of huge cardboard boxes of stuff of all manner that we had accumulated over the years. It was maddening because we couldn’t for the life of us figure out where all of this clutter had come from and it was driving us insane.

We both grew up in homes where clutter was pretty much the norm. Sara’s parents managed to keep it out of the house and had several storage buildings of years of accumulated stuff including such great finds as 175 lamps her Dad bought at the Pickens Flea Market one day. My parents had no such luck so our entire house was full of books and toys. When we moved out on our own we both lived pretty sparse existences in our respective apartments. Sara had a bed, dresser, desk, chair, computer, clothes, and some books. I had my Futon bed / couch, dresser, desk, chair, computer, records, stereo, and books. All of my stuff fit into my first tiny 10 x 10 bedroom and moved comfortably into a 12 x 15 bedroom when my roommate Jeff and I moved to lake Keowee. When we got married and moved in together it was an entirely different story…

Once you’re married your parents want you to get everything that is “yours” out of their houses post haste. Sara and I took a lot of things from our parents’ homes not to mention our wedding gifts which quickly filled our new apartment. I’ll have to admit that even then we hadn’t taken all of our stuff from our parents and I think my mom is still holding out hope that I might come and pick up my old comics, cards, and toys any day now. (I promise; one day Mom!) Before long we were buying books, DVDs, records, musical equipment, toys, and knick knacks that even further filled our home.

At some point over our numerous moves and finally buying a house we ended up with a deluge of clutter of our own. At first I didn’t care. We just bought more storage bins and threw stuff in the attic. We put so much up there it got to be difficult for the builders to get up there to fix a leak and we still kept piling in the junk. At the end of 2008 we had an epiphany. My nephew was born in October and we went in late December to meet him for the first time and see my brother and sister-in-law’s new home in Roanoke, VA. When we got there we were immediately struck by their spartan living. When I say spartan I don’t mean without any kind of luxury but they had seemingly mastered a simple style of living that would prevent their belongings from ever owning them. Some tasteful furniture and modest decoration seemed to be all they needed and it opened my eyes to how Sara and I had been living for the last eight years.

When we got back we were briefly sidetracked on my mission to simplify our living by Sara’s Multiple Sclerosis attack and diagnosis and Vlad’s bout with Lymphoma and hospitalization but by April we were feeling up to tackling our first Spring Cleaning. We ripped the house apart in the course of two weeks and pulled everything out of our closets, attic, bookshelves, dressers, car, and every nook and cranny we could find in the house. The picture afterward was vastly different from the  picture above and I really wish I had taken it for comparison. The office was so full of stuff there was only a small path from the door to our office chairs and in the spare bedroom there was only enough room to walk in the door and toss stuff into boxes. The hall upstairs only had enough room for me to setup a small area to photograph things for eBay.

The first step was to split things into two categories; Goodwill or eBay. After we had everything separated our parents came by and picked the Goodwill pile over. When they finished we still gave away nearly $1000 dollars worth of stuff to the Goodwill and Salvation Army. With our spare bedroom reclaimed we were on to tackle the eBay pile. Over the course of a month I listed auctions daily and Sara helped me pack up, manage payments, ship, and track all of the items. By the end of may we had auctioned at least 100 items and made over $1000 dollars. Through some delusions of my own I undercharged for a fair few items and charged way less on shipping than I should have but we still netted close to $750 dollars that we didn’t have before and with a cat battling cancer and a wife needing another MRI every penny helped.

The thing that amazed me most about all of this is that most of the stuff we had gotten rid of was stuff we had completely forgotten we ever owned. We made a lot of the money off of toys I had collected and kept in their original packaging which was no surprise but we also made a killing off of old computer software and hardware peripherals which was quite shocking. At the end of the day I decided this stuff was no use to me in the attic or a closet and Sara had not only patiently tolerated me owning this stuff for years even though I couldn’t remember it but helped moved it four times so I owed it to her to get what I could for it and make some room in our house and lives.

As things have calmed down toward the end of the year I decided it was important we finish getting rid of the stuff we set out to rid ourselves of at the beginning of the year so now I’ve got a whole slew of new eBay auctions going up for toys, books, computer software and hardware, gaming consoles and systems, games, posters, records, and maybe these cats if I don’t find them in the box pile. With any luck the rest of it will be out of here by the end of January and I can finally have my office back after nearly a year of living with boxes, storage bins, and clutter.

I’d recommend to everyone to take a look at the things they surround themselves and give it some hard thought. Do you own your belongings or are you owned by them? When it comes time to move do you really want to continually move a houseful of junk you never use and don’t need? We didn’t so we did something about it.

Cisco Certification Pyramid

Last Friday I passed my first test for the CCIP (Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional) certification. I passed with a 900 after about two months of studying and a year of almost daily work experience.

The 642-661 (Configuring BGP on Cisco Routers) can be taken on it’s own or in a composite version, 642-691 (BGP+MPLS). I decided to split them up since work had some Cisco Learning Credits and I could take the BGP class online. I ended up getting the online class through NIL who were excellent. In fact another coworker went through the same online class and also passed with a 900 about three weeks before I did.

The actual class (here’s the link to it if you’re interested) went over all of the content very thoroughly and each fundamental topic was accompanied by a cool lab that you could schedule or load on the fly if it was available. Each module had a review test at the end that helped make sure I had grasped all of the material. The only thing bad I have to say about the tests is it would be nice if there were a larger base of questions it could draw from so the tests could be randomized each time. Some of the questions were flat out wrong and I found myself getting them right anyway because I had memorized them.

The thing I liked the best about the class is that it was designed so each topic built on the preceding topics and reviewed the key points from the previous topics. This method of learning is really effective for me as it serves to drive home the key points and also helps me zero in on the things that will definitely be on the test.

I don’t want to play up the class as the be all end all of my study preparation. I knew a lot about BGP before I ever started studying for the test as I’ve been managing our IP transit policies at work for the last year and have had a lot of hands on training configuring and operating a transit network for a Service Provider. The class did fill in a fair few gaps in my understanding of BGP and has given me several ideas for some clean-up work I already had under way.

Now with a self imposed two week break before I start studying again I don’t know what to do with myself. When you go from 20-30 hours of studying  a week to none it always feels like I am forgetting to do something. After new years I am going to get to work on 642-611 (Implementing Cisco MPLS) which is the other half of the composite test. With any luck I’ll finish that in February and can move on to the last two tests.

Anyone ever wonder what he'd look like without that moustache?

So Russia finally announced what happened with Hitler’s remains. Apparently he died from a combination of cyanide poisoning and a self inflicted gun shot wound. The Russians buried the remains in a forest near the town of Rathenau, Germany in June of 1945. When the Soviets decided to give up the garrison there in 1970 they disinterred the remains, burned them, and threw them in a river under direct orders from Yuri Andropov, the then Chief of the KGB.

I have to admit I am kind of surprised how right we got his demise having never been explicitly told what happened. I guess there goes any chance of a zombie Hitler or someone finding the Führer enjoying the remaining years of his retirement in a nice assisted living community in South America. If he had managed to stay alive he would be 120 by now and in the running for the oldest living person.

It’s amazing to hear that they just burned the remains of Hitler, Braun, Goebbels and his family and tossed them out but I can see how they might believe it would prevent their graves from becoming a kind of facist mecca.

I’d debate how successful they were as Nazi Germany continues to be, for most people, one of the most fascinating pieces of modern history. As somewhat of a WWII history buff myself I think it’s interesting to find out what finally happened to the remains of the most rotten core of Nazi Germany. “als Partisanen auszurotten,” indeed!

Kim Novak and Pyewacket in Bell Book And Candle

We decided to go with Pyewacket for the name of our new seal point Siamese kitten. Pyewacket was Kim Novak’s familiar in the movie Bell Book And Candle. (Yes she was a witch in the movie!)

We finally agreed to the name a few weeks ago but things have been so hectic I haven’t had time to post about it much less think about posting here. More posts are coming, we promise!

The new Kitten and Galileo, not fighting for a change...

Well I am a week and a half late with this but better late than never. The wonderful Dianne Alexy of Alexy Cattery listened to my long tale of Vlad’s battle with cancer and was a great person to talk to after he passed. Since Galileo came from her she was very glad to hear what a strong pillar he had been for Sara and I. When Vlad passed Sara and I had a rough time but poor Gali had to sit home alone everyday. Dianne agreed that a new friend might be good for Gali so we brought a new kitten home last Friday.

As anyone introducing a new cat into a household with an old cat could guess, they weren’t immediately the best of friends. Gali was very interested in our new guest but didn’t want him closer than about a meter. Any breaches of Gali’s self proclaimed neutral zone resulted in growling, hissing, and a smacky paw if the kitten didn’t get the message. It took about four days until they would sit this close without Gali growling the entire time. Earlier this evening Sara and I actually caught them sleeping together in the bed in the office and they have been playing non-stop for the last hour. I think Gali may be ready to accept him into the fold.

One thing I did forget about new kittens is that they are on a time table all their own. This guy is not a fan of letting us sleep. For the first five days he wouldn’t let us sleep for more than an hour or two every night. We took turns trying to wear him out but three hours of playing each evening before bed resulted in a wired cat and exhausted Will and Sara trampoline. We broke down and took Ambien on Wednesday night hoping we could get a nights peace and the Kitten still managed to wake us up at 4 AM. Did I mention that kittens, much like puppies, like to chew on everything? So far he’s eaten a handful of papers and our hands and feet whenever he can get a hold of them…

At any rate, you may notice we are still calling him, “Kitten.” We’re have a tough time settling on a name for our new addition. If you have a good one just post it here and we’ll post soon with what we decide. So far some of the front runners are Pyewacket, Azrael (Gargamel’s cat from the smurfs, not the archangel of death although it might be more suiting…), Kai (my boss suggested this one, it means “Stop It” in Yoruba and suits him VERY well…), Oberon, Puck, and Sebastian. We’d like a name that denotes how wild and troublesome he is. Out of all the cats we’ve had Sara and I agree he is the craziest and that’s saying a lot considering the sheer number of felines Sara has had over the years.

Bye bye happy NuVox/NewSouth circle thing!

Sara and I have been extremely busy this week so I’ll have to ask you to cut us some slack for being a few days late with this news.

Wednesday November 3rd NuVox, Inc. entered into an agreement to be acquired by the Windstream Corporation (NYSE: WIN).

The purchase has been valued at over $643 million dollars. Windstream expects to issue 18.7 million fixed shares of stock valued at $183 million dollars, pay $280 million dollars, and assume a net debt of $180 million dollars as part of the proposed transaction.

You can read the official statements on press releases at BusinessWire or on the Windstream or NuVox websites. For my unofficial, not in anyway representative of my employer statement, keep reading.

I have worked for NuVox since July of 2001 and Sara was hired on in April of 2002 to prepare for the One.NET acquisition. My initial thought, being a veteran of a large number of mergers and acquisitions at NuVox was, “We’ll see what happens.” After reading some more about Windstream I have to say I am very excited about the prospects for the combined company. I assume Windstream hopes to deploy NuVox’s products across it’s footprint and vice versa although I haven’t heard anything to definitively confirm or deny this. If this is the case I am interested to see how NuVox’s product set would be deployed on Windstream’s network and vice versa not to mention the possibility for new products we could deploy on both networks. I could definitely see the benefit in developing an IPTV product that could compete with AT&T’s U-Verse and Verizon’s FIOS offerings.

In my time at NuVox (I started just after the Trivergent and Gabriel Communications merger) the company, our network, and our products and services have grown tremendously. I’ve gotten to play a part in the convergence of our network (MPLS roll out, Sonus VoIP deployment, QoS and Multicast roll out, etc.) development of some of our coolest products and services (VoxIP, VoIP product, and VoxNET, MPLS VPN product with optional QoS and Multicast) , and helped integrate multiple networks into the NuVox network as a part of our various mergers and acquisitions. (See the timeline below…) With the amount of the time and effort I’ve invested in the last eight and a half years I’ll admit that it’s been hard not to get attached. I work with a great group of people that have worked some miracles over the years to build NuVox’s network.

At any rate, here’s a time line I’ve put together to try to document all of the mergers and acquisitions over the course of NuVox’s history. I am missing some exact dates so if I got something wrong or missed something feel free to comment and I’ll update it. It was hard enough to track down dates (much less precise dates) for all of the constituent parts of NuVox so I’ll let someone else who is more inclined do the Windstream piece. I think NuVox’s M&A history is a drop in the bucket compared to their’s.

1995:

Sometime in 1995 – Carolina Online, Inc. is founded to provide internet access to the businesses and residents of South Carolina.

1996:

January 1996 – Nicky Smith starts the Internet/MCR Corporation to provide internet access to the businesses and residents of North Carolina.
February 1996 - ISAAC.net is founded to provide internet access to the businesses and residents of Wilmington, NC.

1997:

Sometime in 1997 – NewSouth Communications is founded to service business customers in the Southeast.

1998:

Sometime in 1998 – Florida Digital Network is founded to service businesses and residents in Florida.
November 1998 – Bob Brooks of Brooks Fiber and Cencom Cable Associates (Charter) fame founds Gabriel Communications to service business customers in the Midwest.

1999:

Sometime in 1999 – The Houser family founds State Communications to service businesses and residents in the Southeast.
April 1999 – State Communications acquires Carolina Online, Inc. and becomes Trivergent. Trivergent continues to provide residential and business internet and phone service to customers in the Southeast.

2000:

February 2000 – Trivergent acquires ISAAC.net and Teleco of Wilmington.
March 2000 – Gabriel Communications and Solutech launch WebBizApps, LLC venture to provide an array of web based business applications.
April 2000 – NewSouth Communications and UniversalCom, Inc. announce intent to merge.
June 2000 – Trivergent and Gabriel Communications announce intent to merge.
July 2000 – Trivergent acquires Internet/MCR Corporation.
NewSouth Communications and UniversalCom, Inc. merger closes. The new company will continue to operate as NewSouth Communications.
November 2000 – Trivergent and Gabriel Communications merger closes.

2001:

February 2001 – NuVox Communications is chosen for the name of the new company created through the merger of Trivergent and Gabriel Communications.
May 2001 – NuVox acquires the remaining 50% of WebBizApps, LLC from Solutech.

2002:

February 2002 – NuVox acquires One.Net from US.net.
April 2002 – LecStar purchases the resale residential phone service customers left from the State Communications days from NuVox.
NuVox acquires Edge Connections, Inc.

2003:

March 2003 – FDN acquires the Florida assets of MPower Communications.

2004:

February 2004 – NuVox and NewSouth Communications announce intent to merge.
May 2004 – NuVox and NewSouth Communications merger closes. The new company will continue to operate as NuVox.

2005:

March 2005 – FDN and HIG Capital jointly acquire Supra Telecom.

2007:

March 2007 – NuVox and FDN announce intent to merge.
June 2007 – NuVox and FDN merger closes. The new company will continue to operate as NuVox.

2009:

November 2009 – Windstream to acquire NuVox.