How AOC Connect juggles today's market churn with tomorrow's demands

AOC Connect changed its trajectory forever in April 2023, when the federal telecommunications carrier was acquired by investment firm JLC Infrastructure following a two-year search for a new owner.

Then as is per custom in GovCon, AOC spent the immediate post-close months on bolstering its internal muscle before turning its eyes outward on acquisitions and other growth avenues with JLC’s backing.

But one of those immediate internal items was laying out a plan to expand AOC’s network that covered 5,000 fiber miles across the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region, chief executive Bill Reynolds told us. He moved up to the CEO post in October following one year as chief revenue officer.

JLC primarily focuses on the transportation, communications, energy, utilities and social infrastructure sectors in North America. Loop Capital's co-founder and chief executive Jim Reynolds leads JLC alongside basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson.

“Since JLC came in, we’ve been able to act more like a large business that can turn support up as needed,” Reynolds said. “They’ve helped us not only with leadership, but also in making connections out in the infrastructure market.”

Reynolds estimated that AOC has added approximately 20% greater capacity to its network since JLC entered the fold. AOC also can act as a reseller of services from other carriers depending on what a federal customer asks for, he added.

“We’ve invested in the fiber and we have that as a backbone, but can also expand and build as needed,” Reynolds said. “Sometimes we have to patch and mix things to provide diversity and vary the network.”

AOC’s acquisition of Core Technologies in the summer of 2023 was an entry point into the government-wide Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract vehicle for network modernization. The transaction also brought more of a large business approach to the buyer.

Reynolds said CTI added approximately 40 companies to AOC’s vendor list and bolstered the overall offering to include Spectrum, the brand name of connectivity services offered by CTI’s former owner Charter.

That new status as a reseller of Spectrum services feeds into a long-standing goal of AOC to bolster its end user services and have more relationships with the larger carriers, Reynolds said.

Chantilly, Virginia-headquartered AOC has experienced one setback in this current era of JLC backing and in the first two months of a new Trump administration. As part of the CTI acquisition, AOC also inherited a potential $474 million task order the Interior Department awarded the former in 2020.

Interior is not continuing on beyond the current option that expires on March 31 and AOC is working to transition away from the work under a different plan, Reynolds said. AOC does also hold a potential $175 million order the Customs and Border Protection agency awarded in 2022.

But the roller coaster nature of change so far has taught Reynolds and the AOC team a few things on the communications front when it comes to customers. For example, AOC conducted a full capability briefing to one of its clients in the week before Reyolds spoke with us.

“We have those conversations to make sure we’re on the same page, wanting the same things,” Reynolds said. “There are different discussion on broad tech requirements and they give feedback on what they’re looking for.”

Many of those discussions will also factor into AOC’s thinking about the follow-on to EIS, currently called Next Generation Network Infrastructure or NGNI in the shorthand.

That name is likely to change in the future, as will all things technology before the successor opens for business. Reynolds sounded just fine with that environment.

“In a period of turmoil, there will be a wealth of opportunity in certain key areas,” Reynolds said. “That allows smaller companies like ours to be successful.”