Warwick Valley Telephone Company, a leading cloud communications company, has been approved by New York State Public Service Commission ("PSC"), the State of New Jersey Board of Public Utilities ("BPU"), and the New York State Telecommunications Association ("NYSTA") to acquire Alteva (News - Alert), LLC. Also known as WVT Communications Group, WVT has also obtained permission to combine its existing strategic operating businesses with Alteva.

"We appreciate New York and New Jersey state officials showing their support for our strategic growth plans, which enabled us to finalize our acquisition of Alteva," said Duane W. Albro, President and CEO of WVT Communications Group, in a statement.  "Thanks to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Pat Foye and his State of New York Economic Development staff, New York State Senator Bill Larkin, the PSC and BPU, we have begun transforming our business into a high-growth company that leverages a successful telecommunications legacy in pursuit of building a platform of higher-margin cloud communications services."

With the acquisition, WVT’s cloud communications platform is boosted by Alteva’s cloud-based Unified Communications (News - Alert) ("UC") solutions platform. According to the officials from WVT, the company expects to grow its revenues by approximately 30 percent on an annual basis, with an even greater percentage improvement in operating cash flow growth with Alteva acquisition.

Albro continued, "Part of our plan is to support the growth of our new company by expanding customer service operations in Warwick, retrain and redeploy employees and continue to add to our Warwick workforce to support continued customer growth. This reallocation of work is a critical step in alleviating the need to layoff many of WVT's union-represented workforces in our ILEC business because of the decline in local 'landline' telephone subscribers. At the same time, we have been experiencing continued demand for our unified communications services. We are proud to report that our transformation into a cloud communications company is progressing as planned. The result is that WVT is growing and we are hiring!"

Rahul Arora is a TMCnet contributor. He has worked as an editor and freelance writer for several reputed organizations in India. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves