Windstream has announced the sale of Web 1.0-era consumer internet services business Earthlink to Dallas-based private equity firm Trive Capital for $330 million.

The deal comes less than two years after the Little Rock, Arkansas-based Windstream’s $1.1 billion all-stock purchase of Earthlink, the ISP founded back in 1994 as an alternative to America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe.

The legacy EarthLink consumer internet business offers internet access, online back-up, managed web design, web hosting and various email services to more than 600,000 customers throughout the U.S.

“This transaction enables us to divest a non-core segment and focus exclusively on our two largest business units. In addition, it improves our credit profile and metrics in 2019 and beyond,” said Tony Thomas, president and CEO of Windstream.

As RCR Wireless noted, when Windstream purchased Earthlink in February 1994, the telecom touted the combined network’s reach of 145,000 route-miles of fiber, Earthlink’s early launch of SD-WAN and expected annual cost synergies of $125 million.

Speaking to Bloomberg, however, Windstream spokesperson Chris King added, “People paid $5 to $10 a month for email. It was not a strategic asset for us.”

For Windstream, the divesture of Earthlink follows the $60.5 million sale of dark fiber assets in Minnesota and Nebraska to Minnesota-based telecom provider Arvig Enterprises last month.

“We are excited to partner with and support the EarthLink management team in continuing to provide great products and services available to millions of households in the United States,” said Trive Managing Partner, Conner Searcy. “We intend to provide additional resources and access to deep industry relationships to help grow the brand in the coming years.”

The Feds have given a clean antitrust review bill of health to the proposed $1.1 billion merger of ISPs Windstream and Earthlink.

The deal was listed among those that had been granted early termination of their Hart Scott Rodino antitrust reviews. Those are conducted by either the Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission--they never say which reviewed a deal when granting early termination, but Justice usually handles telecom transactions.

Early termination means they are done with the review and are not suggesting that the merger be blocked or suing to insure that certain conditions are applied.

The FCC will also need to sign off, but that process will take a while longer. The FCC opened its review docket on the deal Dec. 2 and reply comments are not due until Dec. 23, so there will likely be no decision before early next year. The companies signaled they did not expect the deal to be able to close until first quarter 2017.

The companies announced Nov. 7 they had reached a deal for an all-stock deal for $1.1 billion, including debt.

The combined company will have 145,000 fiber route miles, including key Southeast and Northeast routes, and make it a stronger player in the enterprise (business data services) sector, they said.

They told the FCC that the deal would would lower overhead and lead to at least $50 million annually in "network access synergies" in a "relatively short" timeframe, the FCC said in establishing the comment cycle for the deal.

The FCC review goes beyond antitrust to look at public interest factors and boosting competition in the business data services (BDS) market has been one of the FCC's goals in a planned--though since tabled--revamp of BDS regs.

Windstream also said the meld would give it more flexibility in "strategic investments."

The new company will be called Windstream and be based in Little Rock, Ark.

Windstream Holdings said Monday it had pulled the trigger on a $1.1 billion all-stock deal, including debt, to merge with fellow ISP EarthLink, reasoning that the deal will give Windstream a national footprint spanning about 145,000 fiber route miles, including “strategic routes” in the Southeast and Northeast U.S

Under the deal, EarthLink shareholders will receive 0.818 shares of Windstream common stock for each EarthLink share owned, representing a 13% premium to the average exchange ratio of 0.721x over the month ended Nov. 3, 2016, the most recent unaffected trading day. Windstream expects to issue approximately 93 million shares of stock valued at approximately $673 million, based on the company’s closing stock price on Nov. 4, 2016. Windstream shareholders will own about 51% of the combined company, with EarthLink shareholders owning the rest.

They expect the deal to create annual operating and capital expenditure synergies of more than $125 million.

They expect the deal to close in the first half of 2017, with Tony Thomas to serve as president and chief executive officer of the combined company and Bob Gunderman serving as chief financial officer of the combined company.

The combined company will keep the Windstream name and remain headquartered in Little Rock, Ark.

EarthLink, a pioneering ISP going back to when dial-up was the primary connection point, had sought a wholesaling condition on the Comcast-NBCU merger. It was also a strong advocate for multi-ISP conditions  to be placed on the 2000 AOL-Time Warner merger.

EarthLink is the latest ISP of yore to get acquired. Verizon snapped up AOL last year. In 2001, SBC (now part of AT&T) acquired Prodigy.  AOL acquired CompuServe in 1997.

The bulk of EarthLink’s revenues now comes from the enterprise/mid-market and small business sectors. EarthLink posted Q3 revenues of 235.1 million, down 13.2% year-over-year.  About $47.8 million of the Q3 total came from consumer services.

EarthLink ended Q3 with about 427,000 “narrowband” subscribers, and 244,000 broadband subs.