(Bloomberg) -- Zayo Group Holdings Inc. is negotiating a potential purchase of Crown Castle Inc.’s fiber business after talks with rival bidder TPG Inc. cooled, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Discussions with Zayo picked up pace after talks broke off with TPG, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Zayo’s offer topped that of TPG, and a deal for Crown Castle’s entire fiber business could be valued at more than $8 billion, according to the people.

There’s no certainty a deal will be reached. Crown Castle could always decide to keep the business or TPG could re-emerge as a buyer, the people said.

Zayo agreed in 2019 to be taken private by DigitalBridge Group Inc. and EQT AB in a transaction valued at $14.3 billion. Zayo announced this month that it intends to build more than 5,000 long-haul fiber route miles to meet the growing demands of AI workloads.

Representatives for Zayo, Crown Castle, DigitalBridge, EQT and TPG declined to comment.

Crown Castle launched a review of the fiber business in 2023 as part of a pact with activist investor Elliott Investment Management, which also won seats on the Houston-based real estate investment trust’s board. Bloomberg News reported that Crown Castle had been in advanced talks with buyout firm TPG at the end of last year, but those discussions haven’t yielded an agreement.

A sale would allow Crown Castle to focus on its core towers business, which has about 40,000 towers throughout the US, according to an investor presentation in November.

Shares of Crown Castle have sunk 19% in the past year. They fell 1.9% to $88.05 at 3:36 p.m. Wednesday in New York trading, giving the company a market value of about $38 billion.

Telecommunications companies and private equity firms have been pouring cash into fiber and digital-infrastructure providers to help fund expansion. Crown Castle’s wireless assets include a network of so-called small cells — small antennas that increase a wireless network’s capacity. Those are connected by fiber optic cable. 

Zayo is also preparing to sell $1.4 billion of bonds secured by its fiber-network infrastructure and customer contracts, Bloomberg News has reported. 

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