It seems like almost year since 2018 began. Oh wait, it actually has been almost a year. The world of infrastructure M&A was a fairly busy one once again, and I'll bet that many have forgotten swaths of the year's events. Let's take a quick look back.

In North America, once you get past the big wireless merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, infrastructure M&A was decidedly focused on smaller regional moves this year. Both strategic buyers and private equity seemed to zero in on opportunities that spanned minor or possibly a few major markets.

There were only a few repeat network buyers out there this year. In terms of raw numbers, Conterra  made two more moves down south: Network Communications and NUSA.  Meanwhile, although it was in Europe that GTT made their big move, they also made two North American deals: Access Point in North Carolina and Accelerated up in Canada, both adding to their customer lists and talent pools.  Ever-active Zayo bought two and sold one this year, acquiring Neutral Path in the upper Midwest and Optic Zoo in British Columbia, while divesting Scott-Rice to New Ulm Telecom up in Minnesota. And Uniti managed to win two fiber sale/leaseback deals, one with TPx and the other with CableSouth.