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Atlanta, Georgia based Birch Communications has closed the purchase of the Ernest Communications’ (News - Alert) client base, accounts receivable, and physical assets. This past June, the company had signed the asset purchase agreement.

Vincent M. Oddo, president and CEO at Birch, said that the suite of solutions that Ernest provided to its former business clients – voice, data and hosted/managed services – is “a perfect match” with the current Birch business product offerings.

Birch provides IP-based communications and cloud services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in select metropolitan areas across the United States. The company has been on an acquisition spree in a bid to expand its business footprint. The asset purchase of Ernest Communications is the 19th acquisition transaction since 2005. It now provides service to business customers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia; Canada and Puerto Rico.

Birch strives to provide its valued business customers with the highest level of products and customer satisfaction, Oddo said, adding that this is the same approach that Ernest had taken in the past.

 “We are thrilled to add all of their capabilities and expertise to the Birch umbrella!” he said.

The company intends to introduce former Ernest business clients to the company’s 24x7 customer service, as well as to the expanded product portfolio of leading edge IP-based services, according to Chris Aversano, chief operating officer at Birch. 

"We anticipate that they will benefit from our dedication to providing quality service via our team of support professionals,” he said.

Aversano also indicated that many of the former Ernest staff and sales partners now are part the company.

Earlier in May, Birch signed an asset purchase agreement to acquire select customer and network assets from Lightyear Network Solutions (News - Alert). This purchase is expected to close in the third quarter of 2013.