Local real estate firms lead $5M investment in internet provider Xiber

Three Indianapolis-area real estate companies are leading a $5 million investment in Indianapolis-based internet service provider Xiber LLC.

Milhaus and Birge & Held, both based in Indianapolis, along with Carmel-based Hageman Group, account for more than half of the round of investment in the company, which plans to use the funds to help it expand nationally. In return, the real estate firms secured an undisclosed ownership percentage in Xiber.

Milhaus CEO Tadd Miller said his firm, which is also a Xiber customer, decided to invest in the company because of demands from his clients for the services Xiber offers, such as home automation.

With Xiber’s services, Milhaus residents “can use their phone to access their apartment, building amenities, to get their high-speed internet, if they want to let a cleaning lady in,” Miller said.

“It’s a fully integrated system,” he said. “It merges what Comcast and Brighthouse do with what AT&T does, with what our lock companies do. It’s going to change the whole space, and we wanted to be a part of that.”

Milhaus has already deployed Xiber’s services in some of its buildings in Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Tampa. Milhaus' portfolio also consists of projects in Cincinnati, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Memphis, St. Petersburg and Bonita Springs. In other projects, Miller said “we’ll have to wait for contracts to expire" before deploying Xiber.

Besides being a customer, Milhaus said it decided to invest because “there’s huge on-tap demand from all of our competition and we believe this is good for the industry, not just good for Milhaus.”

Milhaus also announced that Steve Werner, current Milhaus director of technology, will join Xiber as vice president of customer operations.

Representatives from Birge & Held and the Hageman Group did not immediately reply to IBJ.

Xiber, which declined to comment to IBJ about the investment, bills itself as a “premier, affordable provider of Gigabit internet service.” Founded in 2013, it has facilities in 18 states.

It provides high-speed internet, managed security, Wi-Fi options and cloud-based backup and storage solutions to individual customers, multi-tenant commercial and residential high-rise buildings, complexes and communities.