The acquisition of Wisconsin-based digital infrastructure business OneNeck IT Solutions by Igneo-backed US Signal positions the combined firm for growth, the co-head of Igneo Infrastructure Partners’ North America business told Infralogic.

US Signal announced its acquisition of OneNeck earlier this week from Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. The transaction will add six data centers to US Signal’s existing nine, quadrupling the firm’s square footage while extending its reach to the West Coast. Terms weren’t disclosed, but a spokesperson for Igneo said the firm provided financing for the acquisition.

In interviews this week with Infralogic, NYC-based Igneo Partner Michael Ryder and US Signal CEO Daniel Watts said they see opportunities for expansion because of OneNeck’s geographic footprint in the Midwest, Arizona, Colorado and Oregon. But the customer-service driven culture of Madison-based OneNeck meshed well with Grand Rapids-based US Signal’s corporate culture and helped convince them of the wisdom of the acquisition.

“We’re excited to make this step forward, to bring on the OneNeck team and their asset base,” Ryder said. What attracted Watts about OneNeck especially was “their focus on the customer from a cultural perspective, there are few things that are as important as culture in an organization. From a cultural perspective, their hyper-focus on the customer and providing an exceptional service, it matches our culture to a ‘t,’” he told Infralogic.

The acquisition of OneNeck also vindicates Igneo’s strategy in acquiring US Signal in 2022, Ryder said. It took Igneo “a couple of years” to find the right chance to enter the digital sector’s middle market, in line with the firm’s larger middle market investment strategy.

“We were particularly looking for businesses that could give us exposure to both the data center sector and the fiber sector, where we saw true opportunity,” he said.

The addition of OneNeck made sense in terms of Igneo’s plan in acquiring US Signal, Ryder said.

“We think the combination of co-location data centers and services as well as fiber and enterprise fiber creates much stronger relationships with our customers, enables us to provide a quite broad products suite which we think positions US Signal well in the market,” Ryder said. “And we also saw significant opportunity to grow the business under our ownership.”

With OneNeck’s complement to US Signal’s “two core competencies” of connectivity and data centers and adjacent competencies in the cloud space, Watts said the acquisition brings “additional product opportunities as part of the combined organization, additional scale and a greater ability to service our customers, which for both companies is the North Star for how they go to market.”

Watts and Ryder said that US Signal is looking ahead to further growth, but the immediate focus will be on bringing OneNeck fully into the US Signal operation.

The goal will be to “fully integrate the businesses over the next year, with a real focus on ensuring that we retain our capability to provide a differentiated customer experience, which is what both businesses are known for,” Watts said. “So that will be our sole focus for the next year or so.”

Even so, US Signal will take things as they come.

“We are looking at small tuck-in opportunities as it relates to singular data centers within our footprint, where it makes sense opportunistically,” Watts said. “We’ve done one of those already and we’ve looked at others, but from an inorganic perspective over the next year, our focus is going to be ingesting this acquisition–driving great culture, focusing on our customers and growing those relationships with the customers that we serve today.”

As they look at next steps for the business, Ryder and Watts said they’re already moving toward using renewable energy for US Signal’s data centers. Under already signed agreements with power companies, by 2026, all of its Michigan data centers will be on renewable energy, Watts said.

“It’s an area we’ve been working closely with Dan and the management team on and we will continue to, as we integrate in the OneNeck portfolio and think about opportunities there to further enhance our position in terms of power supply, water, resource usage etcetera,” Ryder said.