CHARLOTTE – The corporate parent of the former Triad-based NorthState Communications is selling its commercial services business to Cox Communications but will retain ownership of its infrastructure business focus on building fiber-to-the home and residential as well as services for smaller businesses.

EQT Infrastructure, which is based in Sweden, operates the Segra company that was built around NorthState and two other communications services providers across the southeast and North Carolina. Segra is based in Charlotte.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The deal was announced in Stockholm on Tuesday.

Segra acquired NorthState in May of 2020 for some $240 million.

Segra’s commercial business includes bandwidth services provided to a variety of firms.

EQT, a private equity firm, said it has “strengthened its commitment to support [the remaining Segra businesses] next phase of growth.” The retained business operates under NorthState and Lumos Network names.

Segra has some 1,200 employees and operates a 26,000-mile fiber network.

“Following the transaction, EQT plans to significantly accelerate the build-out of fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) throughout the region, bringing high speed fiber bandwidth for the first time to a large number of markets, many of which to date, have been disadvantaged by no or low availability of quality high speed broadband connectivity,” the company said.

A map of Segra’s fiber netowrk. (Segra image)