Consolidated Communications, which operates the legacy telephone network in New Hampshire, has agreed to be bought for $3.1 billion by private equity firms Searchlight Capital Partners, and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI).

The sale, if it goes through, will be the fourth time that the telephone network in Northern New England has changed hands since the 1984 breakup of AT&T.

The transaction still requires approval from federal and state regulators, including the PUC in New Hampshire. Vermont’s Public Utilities Commission approved the sale Nov. 14.

Searchlight is a global private investment firm with at least $12 billion in assets that first invested in Consolidated Communications in 2020.

Consolidated Communications says that going private through the sale will give it the money to expand its construction of a fiber-optic backbone to handle voice and the increasingly important business of video and internet through its Fidium brand. The recent record of publicly traded companies being purchased by private equity firms is spotty, however, with customer service often suffering to improve investor returns.

Consolidated Communications operates phone and data systems in more than 20 states. It entered Northern New England in 2017 when it bought FairPoint Communications, which in 2008 had bought Verizon’s network in the three states. Verizon had been created out of mergers between Bell Atlantic in New England and NYNEX in New York, two “baby Bells” created after the AT&T breakup in 1984.

David Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@cmonitor.com.