CTC Communications and Lightship Telecom to Merge

CTC Communications and Lightship Telecom to Merge
Deal creates leading CLEC in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic
Waltham, MA and Bedford, NH (March 24, 2005) CTC Communications and Lightship Telecom, two of the leading facilities-based telecommunication providers in the New England area, have announced an agreement to merge the two companies. The newly merged company, which will operate as CTC Communications, will be the pre-eminent competitive local exchange carrier headquartered in New England, with its corporate offices located in Waltham, MA.
CTC has provided telecommunication services to business customers throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions for more than 20 years, with customer service and support provided through 15 regional offices. Lightship Telecom, founded in 1998, serves business customers in New England from its operational headquarters in Bedford, NH and 6 regional offices.
The merged company will provide businesses with a financially strong, customer-focused telecommunications partner as it combines Lightships experience in data networking and traditional telephony with CTCs success in building fiber optic next-generation networks and in implementing business-grade Voice over IP (VoIP) services. CTC has been providing carrier class voice services over its all-IP network since 2000 and is the market leader in VoIP across the regions it serves. The combined companies will have the capability to serve the needs of the most demanding business customers with a broad and flexible portfolio of service offerings.
Lightship Telecom is an ideal merger partner as we continue to implement our aggressive growth strategy and establish ourselves as the premier competitive telecom carrier in the Northeast corridor, said Ray Allieri, Chief Executive Officer at CTC Communications, a position he will retain after the merger. Both companies remain committed to continue providing excellent customer service during and after this transition period. With the talents and resources of the combined companies we will serve our customers even better by increasing the reach of our network, broadening our product portfolio, and accelerating the introduction of new service offerings.
This merger provides business customers in New England with more options, said Kevin OHare, President and Chief Executive Officer, Lightship Telecom. More companies in more communities will now be able to take advantage of the broadest and most flexible set of services in the market, all supported by our outstanding customer support teams.
This transaction demonstrates our focus on building the premier telecommunications alternative in the Northeast, explained Ken Peterson, Chairman of CTC and CEO of Columbia Ventures, the parent of CTC. We remain committed to growing the combined company not only organically but with other strategic investment opportunities as well. Ray and I look forward to welcoming the employees and customers of both companies to the new merged enterprise when the transaction closes in the next few weeks.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The companies expect to receive swift approval from regulatory agencies.
Lightship was backed by JPMorgan Partners and Megunticook, and their financial advisor in the transaction was Q Advisors LLC of Denver, Colorado. CTC is owned by CVC and their financial advisor in the transaction was the Bank Street Group, LLC.
About CTC Communications
CTC is a leading integrated communications carrier providing its customers with a full range of converged voice, data and Internet services, which are dynamically allocated on a next-generation, all IP packet-based network. The company serves small, medium and larger business customers from Virginia to Maine. CTCs Cisco-powered IP+ATM packet network runs over a fully managed and CTC owned fiber optic network. CTC has provided cost-effective communication solutions since 1981 and is today part of Columbia Ventures Corporations worldwide family of businesses. Visit CTC Communications online at www.ctcnet.com.
About Lightship Telecom
Lightship Telecom provides New England businesses with high-speed Internet and data access, local and long distance telephone service, dynamic bandwidth allocation, Wide Area Networks, co-location and hosting services. Other services and features include conference calling, voicemail, account codes, e-mail, and managed modem services. Lightship delivers voice, Internet and data access over a facilities-based digital switching network deployed throughout the business centers of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont. Additional information is found online at www.lightship.com.
About Columbia Ventures Corp
Columbia Ventures Corporation, the parent company of CTC Communications, based in Vancouver, Washington, is a multinational, entrepreneurial, private equity company. Other wholly-owned CVC telecommunication investments include Hibernia Atlantic, a transatlantic cable system linking Boston, New York, Halifax, Dublin and London, and Magnet Networks, a Dublin company bringing triple play services via Fiber-To-The-Home and ADSL2+ to
Ireland. For more information, contact Russell Oliver, Vice President of Business Development, North America, at [email protected].
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