FirstLight Fiber and Fibrenoire Team Up to Offer Connectivity Between the US and Canada

ALBANY, NY--(Marketwired - Jan 28, 2014) - FirstLight Fiber, a facilities-based telecommunications service provider operating fiber optic networks in Upstate New York and Northern New England with connectivity to Canada, announced today a relationship to provide high performance Ethernet services between the US and Canada with Fibrenoire, a telecommunications company specializing in fiber optic connectivity services for businesses in Quebec and Ontario.

The relationship between the two fiber-based service providers allows the companies to seamlessly extend their respective footprints to enable scalable, high performance Ethernet services. Fibrenoire and FirstLight Ethernet services are MEF 2.0 compliant, ensuring added scalability and reliability. Through this relationship, FirstLight and Fibrenoire customers can easily source cost-effective, high capacity, standardized Ethernet connectivity, which prior to this relationship had been difficult for customers to obtain.

"Historically, businesses found it difficult to find connectivity across the border between the United States and Canada," commented Benjamin Desmarais, President and CEO of Fibrenoire. "We have worked with FirstLight [through the former TelJet] for several years, and in our pursuit to increase our capabilities into the US, syncing up with an independent carrier operating in Northern New England, like FirstLight, was a natural fit. Our companies are similar in many ways and our relationship with FirstLight allows us to leverage our combined strengths to provide our MEF 2.0 compliant Carrier Ethernet services to businesses requiring connectivity between the two countries."

"Fibrenoire's network complements the FirstLight network, extending our capabilities into new Canadian markets and allowing our customers to enjoy high quality services that don't stop at the border," added Patrick Coughlin, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing of FirstLight. "This arrangement further demonstrates our commitment to providing our customers with high speed, reliable services where and when they need them. This comes at the most opportune time, as bandwidth demand between the US and Canada continues to increase across a variety of industries, including finance, gaming, media and more."

To learn more about FirstLight, visit www.firstlight.net, or follow the Company on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About FirstLight Fiber

FirstLight Fiber headquartered in Albany, NY, provides fiber optic data, Internet, colocation and voice services to enterprise and carrier customers in Upstate New York and Northern New England with connectivity to Canada utilizing its own fiber optic network, which spans over 190,000 fiber miles connecting in excess of 1,400 lit locations. FirstLight offers a robust suite of advanced telecommunications products, including dedicated Internet access, Metro Ethernet, traditional TDM solutions, SIP trunks, virtual PBX and audio-conferencing, managed commercial wireless systems, and Data Center Colocation. FirstLight's clientele includes national cellular providers and CLECs and many leading enterprises, spanning high tech manufacturing and research, hospitals and healthcare, banking and financial, secondary education, colleges and universities, and local and state governments. FirstLight is the parent company of New Hampshire-based CLEC, segTEL, and recently acquired the assets of Vermont-based CLEC, TelJet. FirstLight is a portfolio company of Boston-based private equity firm Riverside Partners. 

About Fibrenoire

Founded in 2007, FIBRENOIRE is a telecommunication company specializing exclusively in fiber optic connectivity services for businesses in Quebec and Ontario. FIBRENOIRE is the largest fiber optic network exclusively dedicated to businesses in Quebec and the leading Metro Ethernet Carrier in Eastern Canada. FIBRENOIRE deploys and operates its own network of over 120 million of fiber-meters in the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. The company provides Internet, Ethernet, private and managed IP MPLS, custom-built dark fiber and wavelength transport services, with speeds up to 100Gbps. FIBRENOIRE has more than 1300 lit buildings with an extended coverage of 3800 near-net buildings and serves organizations of all sizes in various vertical markets such as Government, Banking and Financial, Logistics, Aerospace, Pharmaceuticals, Multimedia, Gaming and more. FIBRENOIRE is also MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0 certified and counts several international carriers, datacenters and Internet Service Providers (ISP) as customers. The company has over fifty employees, with its head office in Montreal, Quebec. For more information, please visit www.fibrenoire.ca or follow the company on Twitter.