TMCnet News
American Fiber Systems Completes $25 Million Financing-Senior Credit Facility provided by Comerica-
Rochester, New York, February 3, 2006 – Privately-held American Fiber Systems, Inc, a leading metropolitan fiber optic Broadband Service Provider (BSP) of optical transport services, Wide Area Ethernet connectivity and Internet Access announced the completion today of a $25 million financing. The financing is earmarked for continued organic growth expansion of services, retirement of some $6 million in subordinated debt and future acquisitions.
“American Fiber Systems offers compelling metropolitan broadband solutions for next generation Internet Protocol (IP) data services by leveraging their existing metropolitan fiber optic network infrastructure which the company owns and operates,” said Gita Ramachandran, Chief Financial Officer for American Fiber Systems. “Comerica is committed to serving expansion stage companies in the broadband services sector, and our ability to provide credit facilities can be of great assistance in advancing continued positive growth in companies such as AFS,” said William Sweeney, Senior Vice President, Comerica Bank’s Technology and Life Science Division. Founded in 2000, AFS delivers carrier-grade optical broadband services on a wholesale basis to telecommunications carriers and large Enterprises in markets served. The company owns and operates unique fiber metropolitan optic networks in second tier markets. Since inception, the company believed that sustainable growth in a deregulated local telecommunications economy in the long run requires competitive carriers to own and operate their own metropolitan networks inclusive of the fiber optic infrastructure. The company’s Ethernet and WDM broadband solutions enable telecommunications carriers and large Enterprises to cost-effectively extend existing technology infrastructure for high-bandwidth, high network reliability data services, including optical speed Internet, business services, telephony services, IPTV and video streaming applications.
“AFS is growing revenues rapidly and we found ourselves in 2005 unable to meet organic demand due to capital constraints. This financing serves as an important building block, enabling us to scale our capacity, continue with our provisioning of 100% network reliability of protected service solutions within our expanding customer base,” said Gita Ramachandran, AFS’s Chief Financial Officer. “We are pleased to have a partner like
Comerica on the credit facility side of the business as they have a proven track record of success and understand the challenges of an emerging metropolitan fiber network broadband service provider such as AFS as we enter a hyper growth era.”
About American Fiber Systems
American Fiber Systems, a provider of metropolitan fiber optic network infrastructure and wholesale transport services is dedicated to enabling wire line, wireless carriers and large enterprises in achieving a competitive advantage from optical broadband communications technology. AFS has deployed over 90,000 miles of high-capacity, high-bandwidth metropolitan fiber optic cable since 2000 in several cities, including Atlanta, GA; Cleveland, OH; Kansas City KS/MO; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, Nashville, TN and Salt Lake City, UT. They connect to a city's most important points of communications presence, including ILEC central offices and wire centers; CLEC PoPs; Internet Service Provider (ISP) and data center locations; Inter-exchange “carrier hotels;” wireless providers and cable company head ends; and Fortune 1000 companies. AFS has over 400 capacity enabled on-net buildings. AFS' unique metropolitan fiber optic network footprint supports an addressable market teledensity of over $9 billion in annualized telecommunications services.
About Comerica's Technology and Life Sciences Division
Comerica Bank’s Technology and Life Sciences Division is one of the nation's leading technology banking practices, offering a wide range of financial services tailored to corporate customers, entrepreneurs and professionals. Veteran bankers provide credit and financial services and products to young, growing, professionally backed technology and life sciences companies, as well as their more mature counterparts. The Technology and Life Sciences Division serves all major U.S. technology centers from offices coast-to-coast and its headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. Comerica Bank is a subsidiary of Comerica Incorporated (NYSE: CMA), a financial services company headquartered in Detroit and among the 25 largest U.S. banking companies, with $53 billion in total assets at Dec. 31, 2005.
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