Birch Announces Closing of Navigator Customer Acquisition

Acquisition further positions the company as one of the fastest-growing telecom carriers in the U.S.

Atlanta, GA – July 27, 2009 - Birch Communications, Inc. announced today that it has closed the second tranche of its acquisition of selected business and residential customers from Navigator Telecommunications, LLC. In November, Birch closed the first tranche of this acquisition. In all, 16,000 lines have been acquired by Birch Communications.

In addition to opening up new markets in California, this strategic “tuck-in” transaction further increases the customer density in many of Birch’s existing markets in the midwest, southeast and southwest. As a part of this acquisition, Birch expanded into Arkansas and New York last November.

“With California now in our coverage area, we are able to provide significant savings with superior service to more businesses and residences,” says Mr. Oddo. “Our continued focus on strengthening and expanding our private IP network has had a positive impact for all our customers.”

This acquisition, in addition to the Cleartel acquisition announced in May, further enhances Birch’s position as one of the fastest growing and largest competitive local exchange carriers in the U.S.

“We bring the best-in-class technologies together from a variety of market leading vendors,” explains Tom Stachowiak, Birch vice president of engineering. “Companies like MetaSwitch and Occam Networks partner together with Birch to deliver a state-of-the-art, efficient, low cost, high performance network.”

About Birch Communications
Headquartered in Atlanta GA, Birch Communications is one of the largest competitive local exchange carriers in 32-states across the nation serving small and medium business customers. Birch was the first in its class to deploy its own private IP network utilizing soft switch technology to deliver innovative, high quality, affordable voice and broadband communications services to small and medium business customers. Please visit www.birch.com for more information.

Contact:
Greg Corwin, Marketing Director
greg.corwin@birch.com
816.300.1686

About Navigator Telecommunications
Navigator Telecommunications (www.NavTel.com) provides telecommunication services to business and payphone customers including dial-tone to offices, ATMs, hotels, restaurants, manufacturing, inmate and healthcare facilities. Fully certified in 37 states, Navigator’s growth in the competitive local exchange market has been steady since it’s inception over 10 years ago. For more information about this company, visit www.Navtel.com.

Contact:
Wendy Ross
wendy.ross@navtel.com
501.924.4365