Synergy Capital Managers has announced an investment in Suburban Fiber Company, a next generation broadband company focused on delivering home content solutions to retail end customers in Abuja and Lagos.

Suburban operates an Internet Protocol (IP) Next Generation Network (NGN) which, at its core, takes advantage of the technology advances provided by the trend towards network convergence with the ability to transfer voice, data and media services.

Suburban has a network of over 380km of metro and last-mile fiber currently delivering triple and dual-play services to business and residential customers in Abuja, Nigeria.

Synergy’s investment in Suburban Fiberco will drive the company’s growth, through investment in network expansion, marketing, bandwidth and content to attract new customers onto its network.

The promoters of Suburban Fiber company have extensive experience in the telecoms sector and in response to the shifting regulatory regime and the NCC’s commitment to increasing broadband internet penetration.

The company has positioned itself as a provider of premium content, a differentiating factor in the current market where there are a large number of pure-play internet service providers, but only a few content providers targeting the opportunity in the largely underserved and valuable retail home segment of the telecoms market.

Bruce Ayonote, CEO of Suburban, said: “We are very pleased with the investment of Synergy Private Equity Fund in Suburban Fiber Company. All through the process right to closure, the Manager’s engagement helped increase the value of the company. We were also seeking to improve the governance framework, the capital structure of the company and strengthen the financial control systems. We achieved all three of these objectives with this investment and now have all we require to execute our strategy.”

This is the sixth investment from the Synergy Private Equity Fund I (SPEF).

Akintoye Akindele, Partner at Synergy Capital Managers, said: “In Suburban, we are convinced we have found the right operator with the right vision and proven capacity to execute on the strategy to change the future of triple and dual play internet services across Nigeria and West Africa.”

The private equity fund manager remains active in sourcing and completing deals in its target sectors both in Nigeria and Ghana.

“We are on track to meet our portfolio allotment for 2016 with planned investments in financial services and manufacturing in the course of the year,” said Akindele.

Udo Udoma & Belo Osagie and The New Practice acted as legal counsels on this transaction.

Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan performed commercial diligence of the opportunity, KPMG was responsible for financial due diligence while Environmental Accord did the environmental, social and governance diligence.