Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from Simon Flannery – Morgan Stanley.
Simon Flannery – Morgan Stanley
Jeff, I wonder if you could give us some more color on the NuVox acquisition, a little bit of a departure from you going on the CLEC route. Obviously, you've talked about diversifying your revenue stream here, but perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about the company and how this sort of came to pass. And going forward is there an ability now we've done a lot of deals in a short period of time to do more deals or are we going to take a pause. Actually we'll be looking for deals in the CLEC space or in the ILEC space.
Jeff Gardner
With respect to NuVox, there are many things that attract us to that transaction mostly the business revenue that Tony referenced in his remarks. As we look at this business evolving, broadband and business revenue show better long-term characteristics of growth and I think are the right place to be. We really haven't changed our acquisition strategy, as we've always looked for well run companies.
The management team at NuVox has delivered improving revenue in OIBDA even in this environment. The geographic fit is very unique with respect to NuVox and Windstream. They were in many of the same states that we are in today. They focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. So as you contemplate our model, which is much based on the fact that we're in rural areas that are less competitive, these two are markets where we think we can be successful for a long period of time.
And importantly, the other thing that made this transaction unique was its financial characteristics. We were able the drive free cash flow accretion in year one. That's been fundamentally important in something that we put at the very top of our list as we look at transactions. In addition, we were able to do this transaction the way that maintained our balance sheet and strategic flexibility from a capital structure perspective as it was slightly deleveraging.
So all of those things I think made it a unique transaction for us. We've been looking at CLECs for some time and it was difficult for a number of months to find an accretive deal that fit our operating and financial model. NuVox was absolutely the right deal for us to execute.
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