Company buys Pixius Communications out of bankruptcy and immediately sells it again

UPDATED — Among the things that COVID-19 has impacted has been the sale of Wichita-based Pixius Communications, an internet provider that declared bankruptcy last fall.

“Pixius was a very interesting bankruptcy case,” said Nathan Stooke of Illinois-based Wisper ISP.

Wisper and Iola-based KwiKom Communications were two of the bidders for Pixius, but Las Vegas-based LTD Broadband won the $4.1 million bid.

“Because of the COVID, their funders . . . fell through,” Stooke said.

Wisper immediately bought almost 25% of the company from LTD, and KwiKom bought the rest.

“We split the cost on that ratio,” Stooke said.

“I think it’s a great story of how two companies came together to try to make the situation better as opposed to trying to compete with each other.”

Through the Connect America Fund, which is a government subsidy program to bring broadband to rural markets, Wisper won $220 million in funding over 10 years to build 80,000 locations — meaning at small businesses and houses — across Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Indiana. It’s what led to the company’s interest in Pixius.

“They had a network that we were very interested in,” Stooke said. “It was a very, very good network.”

The network will help Wisper expand in Kansas City and north of Joplin.

For KwiKom, which formed after a merger in 2010 and has been growing through acquisitions ever since, it helps the company expand in central Kansas.

“We have a lot of focus in upgrading and expanding the Pixius network,” said KwiKom vice president Zachery Peres.

Stooke, too, said, “The biggest thing for us is we’re going to upgrade the speeds.”

Pixius had 5,000 customers, most of whom had service that was 10 megabytes or lower. Stooke said Wisper will offer plans for 25, 50 and 100 megabytes.

The Pixius building downtown at Second and St. Francis was not part of the deal.

KwiKom is finishing moving out of that Pixius space and into new space at the former Black Hills Energy building at 3845 W. Harry.

“It was just a little more fitting,” Peres said.

He said there’s more parking and great accessibility to I-235 and Kellogg.

KwiKom has brought on Pixius employees and hired back some who were no longer with the company.

“These employees have been drug through a lot,” Stooke said.

He said that although Pixius was “really, really good at designing a network and building it, some of their contracts were out of whack, I would say.”

Since the bankruptcy was a sale of assets only, Stooke said those broadband contracts were able to be renegotiated at better rates.

Now, he said, “We’re adding employees in the areas we took over.”

KwiKom is planning to expand a call center at its new Wichita space.

“It’s really been a joint effort from the beginning,” Stooke said. “I think it’s . . . a success story.”

This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 4:47 AM.