When a text crossed from one mobile carrier to another, a company in Tampa was often working in between. Syniverse sat between the operators, linking their networks, routing their messages and sorting out roaming charges. Almost no phone user had heard of it. In February 2005 it went public anyway, a plumbing company for the wireless age, owned by managers and the buyout firm GTCR.

Born Inside GTE

The business began in 1987 as GTE Telecommunication Services, a unit of the phone company GTE. When GTE and Bell Atlantic merged in 2000 to form Verizon, it became a Verizon subsidiary. In February 2002 a group of managers and investors led by GTCR bought it, and in 2004 it took the name Syniverse. The bet was that every carrier would rather pay one neutral party than wire itself to every rival.

From the Big Board to Carlyle

Syniverse sold 17.6 million shares at $16 each and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SVR. Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs led the offering. Six years later the Carlyle Group agreed to buy the company for $31 a share in cash, a deal valued at about $2.6 billion. It closed in January 2011. Syniverse left the exchange and has stayed private, still based in Tampa.

Cover: The Courier Kantan dreaming of Himself as a Daimyo (Hikyaku Kantan: yume no daimyo), no. 8 from a series of 12 prints depicting parodies of plays, Okumura Masanobu. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a courier carrying messages.