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BTI is a facilities-based integrated communications provider (ICP) offering voice and data communications services to primarily small and medium-sized business customers in the Southeast. The Company, based in North Carolina's Research Triangle, was founded in 1983 and is one of the largest privately held ICPs in the country today with annual revenues in excess of $271 million. BTI offers a full suite of integrated retail services to business customers, including local, long distance, data, DSL, Internet access and other enhanced services. The Company also offers wholesale services, including switched, private line, special access and prepaid calling card services to other telecommunications carriers and end-user customers. The Company's facilities-based network currently includes fourteen Lucent Technologies 5E 2000 digital local switches to serve local markets, as well as 4 network operations centers with Alcatel 600E digital long distance switches. BTI's fiber network covers 4,400 route miles across the eastern United States, from New York to Miami and from Miami to Nashville, including a 138-mile fiber optic ring linking Raleigh, Durham, Cary and the Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina. In March 2001, BTI received a commitment from Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe (WCAS), a leading private equity firm, to provide $90 million in additional financing. Separately, BTI has received commitment letters with its current lenders, GE Capital, Bank of America, and Export Development Corporation to refinance an extend $89 million in existing credit facilities, subject to the condition of such commitment letters. BTI believes the new credit facility will provide the company with greater flexibility to execute its business plan.