Growing Greenlight Networks

Founded in Rochester, New York, fourteen years ago, Greenlight Networks is expanding beyond its initial Empire State roots into Pennsylvania and Maryland and a bigger mid-Atlantic footprint. Its growth is fueled by private money and some interesting backers along the way.  

“By the end of the year, including the [northeast-Pennsylvania] Loop acquisition, we will be north of about 300,000 homes passed,” said Greenlight Networks founder and CEO Mark Murphy. “What makes Greenlight special is our people, our customer service, the transparency of our pricing. We looked at how the cable companies approach their pricing, and we really tried to stay away from that. We don’t do a lot of promotional activity where you get a special rate for a month or two and then it goes up a lot.” 

Founded in July 2011, Greenlight started offering 1 Gbps fiber services in 2012 to multi-dwelling units (MDU)s and residences in part of Rochester and continued to grow focused on households, a somewhat contrarian approach that continues today. Today, the company offers up to 8 Gbps residential. “We’ve been much more consumer-focused than business-focused,” said Murphy, maintaining simplicity by sticking to broadband and not getting into the additional overhead and expense of offering its own TV, voice, or data center services.

Greenlight Networks got its start in delivering service to residences and MDUs and residences, a practice that continues today as it expands from New York into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Greenlight started its journey with funding from the founder and a small group of local investors. Its early success caught the attention of another Rochester native, Paychex founder and billionaire Tom Golisano, who became a partner in 2018. 

“Tom transformed the business,” said Murphy. “He invested $100 million in us and really pressed me hard to think bigger than I had ever considered about growing the business. With Tom’s help, we hired up and rapidly expanded in Rochester. We launched in Buffalo [in 2020], which Tom was really helpful because of his relationship with the Buffalo Sabres and the community. We then did our first acquisition in Binghamton, a company called Plexicomm, in 2021.” 

Greenlight’s sustained success in New York brought Oak Hill Capital to the table, an investment firm with a strong, deep, and long-term interest in fiber and broadband companies. Oak Hill bought out Golisano’s interest in 2022 and announced it would invest up to $300 million for continued expansion.  

Oak Hill’s capital has enabled Greenlight to expand into Maryland and Pennsylvania this year. In April, it announced $19 million in Pennsylvania greenfield builds into Lackawanna County and the city of Chambersburg. Greenlight expects to light up its first neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland, in the third quarter of 2025 through a $100 million greenfield build for the city. To close out the summer, Greenlight purchased Loop Internet, a fiber internet provider serving the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania. 

“We certainly have a healthy plan to do organic expansions in Maryland and Pennsylvania,” said Murphy. “But I do think there are additional opportunities in those areas, as well as some others. The Loop deal is a great example of how we were able to partner with some sophisticated local firms and make the case as to why it made sense to come onboard with Greenlight. There’s a point in time where companies get landlocked or start realizing they need to generate better margins and get better penetration. We’ve shown ourselves to be good partners in respecting the local market knowledge and people they have and being able to level them up to enhance growth, as opposed to just go in, look for pure cost reductions, and send all the work back to Rochester. That’s not been our track record and that won’t be our track record.”