Zayo Group Friday said it will acquire Ethernet services and dark fiber specialist Litecast/Balticore LLC for $22 million -- the latest in a series of M&A moves for the highly acquisitive service provider.

Litecast, based in Baltimore, owns and operates Baltimore's leading metropolitan fiber network and connects more than 110 on-net buildings, including all of the city's major data centers and carrier hotel facilities, Zayo Group said. The acquisition boosts Zayo's holdings in the mid-Atlantic region, where it also recently acquired AboveNet and FiberGate.

Dan Caruso, Zayo's president and CEO, said the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan market is "increasingly important."

"Given its geography and product offering, Litecast is a natural extension of Zayo's recent acquisition of FiberGate," Caruso said in a statement.

[Related: The 10 Biggest Networking Stories of 2012]

Zayo Group, based in Louisville, Colo., was founded in 2007 and is privately owned. It initially raised about $220 million in venture capital and since its inception has been acquiring nonstop in the service provider space.

Some of its recent grabs include First Telecom, a dark fiber and wavelength business in Reading, Pa.; Arialink, which expanded Zayo's reach into Michigan; MarquisNet, a data center business in Las Vegas; the aforementioned FiberGate; and Atlanta-based USCarrier, half of which Zayo had bought two years earlier.

Its most significant acquisition, however, was AboveNet, which it snapped up earlier this year for $2.28 million. Zayo in July said it would maintain and continue to support AboveNet's channel program and sizable partner base. Zayo over the summer also expanded its agent channel offerings to include both interconnect and co-location services.

The company's overall network holdings include 67,000 route miles, serving 45 states and Washington, D.C. It covers about 10,300 on-net buildings, 510 data centers, 510 carrier points-of-presence and 2,600 cell towers, as well as 136,000 "billable square feet" of co-location space. Among other recent launches, Zayo said it will expand its national network to offer 100G wavelength services in major markets.

Zayo is privately owned, but for its fiscal 2012 reported $382 million in revenue, up 33 percent from the $287.2 million in 2011, with a loss for the year of $5.9 million.

PUBLISHED DEC. 14, 2012