Louisiana Telco EATEL Buying Vision Communications

BV Investment Partners said it signed a definitive agreement to sell Vision Communications, a Louisiana based communications and broadband services provider, to EATEL, a Louisiana-based triple-play provider.

Vision, the incumbent local exchange carrier in Lafourche Parish, has been owned by BV since late 2007, acquired from the Pat Brady family, which had owned it since its founding in 1945.

BV, whose current investment holdings includes cable operator Harron Communications, expanded Vision's service offerings to include Ethernet Transport services, cell tower fiber backhaul, fiber connectivity to schools, libraries and other governmental agencies as well as alarm monitoring and security.

Gonzales, La.-based EATEL provides phone, Internet and TV services to Louisiana residents in Ascension Parish and lower Livingston Parish.

Charlesmead Advisors, LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to EATEL in the transaction. Waller Capital Partners, LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to the owners of Vision in the transaction.

Louis V. Bertocci, a partner at BV, said in a release: "This has been a successful investment for us and we have been very pleased with the operating performance of Vision. On behalf of BV, I want to thank Vision's management team for their dedication and hard work over the past several years. They have been great operating partners." 

BV said the sale is subject to normal regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Kent Gibbons

Kent has been a journalist, writer and editor at Multichannel News since 1994 and with Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He is a good point of contact for anything editorial at the publications and for Nexttv.com. Before joining Multichannel News he had been a newspaper reporter with publications including The Washington Times, The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal and North County News.