Birch Completes Purchase of Primus Telecommunications Assets in Canada

Company expands customer base and service footprint with the purchase of select assets of Canada's largest independent, full-service telecommunications and cloud service provider.

ATLANTA, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Birch Communications, Inc. ("Birch"), a leading nationwide provider of communications, network and cloud services to small, mid-sized, enterprise and wholesale businesses, announced today it has completed the Canada component of its purchase of select assets and customers of Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc. and its affiliates ("Primus"). Primus, Canada's largest independent, full-service telecommunications and cloud service provider, serves more than 250,000 businesses and consumers throughout Canada.

Primus represents Birch's first international asset expansion in the company's 20-year history and extends its geographic service footprint further across North America placing Birch in a select group of providers that can serve customers across the U.S.-Canada border. Birch plans to continue to use the Primus brand for its consumer business and will expand the Birch brand into Canada for business customers. Both Birch and Primus provide complementary product portfolios, each offering industry-leading broadband internet, cloud-hosted PBX, dedicated data access, local phone, long distance and a variety of wholesale solutions.

"We are excited to welcome the Primus customers into the Birch family, and we are eager to introduce these customers to our suite of products, fast-growing fiber footprint and managed services segments, and of course, our award-winning customer care," Vincent Oddo, President and CEO at Birch. "Primus is a great strategic fit as we work toward our goal of growing our service footprint to international markets. As a whole, our entire customer base will benefit from Birch's new, larger territory reach and robust product offerings."

"This expansion of our service footprint includes all of the major cities in Canada, and we look forward to integrating the Primus sales organization," said Christopher Ramsey, Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer at Birch. "As with any purchase of this nature, we are excited to learn from the best sales practices of both organizations and continue to build our now-expanded organic sales powerhouse. We are thrilled to offer our existing customer base and our newly acquired customers the opportunity to expand across the U.S.-Canada border with a seamless solution and we already have enterprise customers on board."

"Customers in Canada will have access to our now expanded award-winning customer care, along with access to a more comprehensive portfolio of communication and technology products," said Grant Williams, Vice President of Customer Care at Birch. "Our teams strive to identify opportunities that will heighten our customers' success such as with our newly added Service Alert Monitor (SAM), which allows us to proactively monitor, detect and alert customers to service interruptions in real-time. Our goal is to quickly address complex issues, expedite time-to-resolution, and set a foundation for more proactive communication with our customers."

Birch marked another year of excellence with its sixth placement on the Inc. 500|5000 list in 2015, a repeat listing on the Atlanta Business Chronicle's List of the 50 Top Private Companies in Atlanta, and the prestigious "Center of Excellence" recognition by BenchmarkPortal. Birch is currently celebrating its 20^th year in business and has a rich history of providing enterprise-class technology to businesses of all sizes.

About Birch Communications

Birch Communications, Inc. is a leading communications, network, cloud and IT solutions provider celebrating 20 years in business (1996-2016). Recognized for exceptional customer experience, Birch delivers cost-effective solutions that assist small, mid-sized, enterprise and wholesale businesses to increase their productivity. Its industry-leading product portfolio is available across North America and includes Metro-Fiber, Metro-Ethernet, unified communications (UC), hosted phone systems, hosted data centers, and hosted file storage services. For more information, visit birch.com.

About Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc.

Primus is the largest national independent telecommunications service provider in Canada. Primus offers a wide selection of business and consumer telecommunications services including Internet, Home Phone, Long Distance, VoIP, Cloud-Based Business Phone Systems (Hosted PBX), Dedicated Data Access and IP connectivity solutions. In the United States, Primus provides reliable and affordable digital home phone (VoIP) service under the Lingo brand. Primus was founded in 1997 with offices across Canada including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, London and Edmundston. For further information, visit primus.ca.

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SOURCE Birch Communications, Inc.

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