Aggregate Networks

"Facilitating Broadband deployment through innovative financing & development for
Municipally-owned networks and MDU FTTH projects."

Aggregate Networks provides Municipal Lease Financing and Development Resources & Services to decrease communications infrastructure development cost and risk. Aggregate, as the Financing Source provides superior value to municipal, state & public utility customers by providing financing to municipalities, developments & public utilities for their own telecom infrastructure. Additionally, as a "Development Partner", Aggregate offers cost-effective, end-to-end solutions by partnering with best-in-class providers, driving out costs and time.

Aggregate Networks has identified an underserved but viable market for financing: demand-driven, credit-worthy, last-mile Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) and wireless projects, developed by either public entities or private developers. While the Telecom meltdown has shut off most funding for private communications infrastructure projects, many of them are necessary, viable, demanded by consumers and are built on solid credit and business plans. Many cities built & operate coax/copper cable-tv systems; fiber is replacing those.

• Municipalities don’t want or can’t issue Bonds to fund "telecom" projects – although
  many aspects of those projects are "essential-use" as required for Municipal Lease-Purchase.

 
• Private cable companies installing Fiber-optic new/overbuilds into apartments or condos (MDU’s) have solid business plans with products & services that add value to the renter and the owner.

 
• Real estate developers want their homes to be "wired for the future" or they will not sell, yet they don’t have the expertise or financing to choose the best technology, install & operate.

Aggregate Networks has been working for 2 years assessing and selling to these markets, while developing critical high-level relationships with virtually every major vendor, supplier, consulting or engineering firm by positioning ourselves as a "Financing Partner", providing a vendor-finance program for municipal and private markets building FTTH Broadband projects.

To accomplish this and to meet our market objectives, we are seeking the right partnerships on the financing side that can provide the following:

• Municipal Lease-Purchase lending to municipalities, Public Utility Districts (PUD) that
  own and operate infrastructure but that can’t or don’t want to use bond dollars for a
  variety of reasons.
   
• Private capital to finance projects for public & private entities. Aggregate Networks would be like a Real Estate Developer, generating income from development and management fees, leases, contracting, engineering and operating. Having a "fully integrated outsourced solution" that included the capital would open hundreds of millions of dollars in financial asset-growing opportunities.

Many communities are pushing their government and/or utility into providing broadband infrastructure as either "open-architecture" or, for smaller cities, public/private partnerships. They are all looking for financing alternatives – which is often their only hurdle! No significant lending institutions have pursued this market because they equate it with "telecom", when it is actually "The 5^th Utility" -- infrastructure that is built for Economic Development, communications infrastructure & competitive growth, following electric, water, telephone and transportation.

Aggregate Networks also offers access to Federal programs led by our Advisory Board
members, Gregory Rohde & Chris McLean (bio’s below). Our Advisors also comprise a critical political component for accessing people in positions of influence for Aggregate Networks, and are uniquely accessible to us.

Rick Kaufmann, Co-founder & Principal – 19 years of Corporate Finance, Lending/leasing,
Sales & Advisement.

Laurance Lewis, Esq., Co-founder & Principal – 14 years of Telecommunications,
Corporate Real Estate, Law & Entrepreneurial deal structuring

Honorable Gregory Rohde, E-Copernicus and former Head of the NTIA – Former Assistant
Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information (NTIA).

Honorable Christopher McLean, E-Copernicus and former Head of the RUS – Former Administrator for program policy and telecommunications with the Rural Utilities Service (RUS).

• Immediate Opportunity: Truckee, CA – We have represented the Truckee Donner
  PUD for 6 months to strategize, organize, plan & forecast its FTTH project. Much of the FTTH network is built on the needs of the TDPUD, government, hospital & community as well as providing a necessary communications infrastructure to meet the needs of residents &
  businesses: $15-$18MM.

 
• The Market: Billions of dollars, strong need and very scalable.

• Estimated 263 communities have built their own communications infrastructure,
  while hundreds more are in process of approving plans to deploy some level of fiber infrastructure.

• The "Fiber-glut" is only in long-haul and big cities – rural areas have none or little.
• A link to all communities undertaking FTTH -http://www.ftthcouncil.org/USOptFiberCommunList2002.pdf
• FTTH Council’s press release: WASHINGTON - August 14, 2002

• FCC’s and APPA’s (American Public Power Association) Top Priority is
  Broadband deployment for "Last Mile"- Municipalities are the only ones in a position to deploy capital necessary. See www.fcc.gov/jointconference and www.appanet.org.

• Aggregate Networks is working closely with the APPA and its members, representing a source for financing alternatives.

• Services are limitless - Some services deliverable over fiber include: Video (CATV),
  Voice, Data, Security monitoring, appliance monitoring, utility monitoring,
  telemedicine, distance learning, games.

• Municipally backed credit risk which has historically minimal non-appropriation and
  default rates (.03% and .01% respectively -- Source: AGL&F- Association for Government Leasing & Finance).

 
• Significant upside and margins for private capital through lease renewals, additional equipment, management services, partnerships, network carrier fees (from fiber retained) on top of monthly lease income and/or transaction fees.

 
• Hundreds of communities have deployed some form of fiber optic network,
  while hundreds more are waiting for a simple solution. An integrated solution with a financing component is cited as the #1 issue to deciding whether to build or not.

• Internal Capital: $6,000,000 for 3 years of infrastructure growth – profitable
  beyond and immediately upon stopping growth (if self-funded).

 
• Transaction Capital: estimated at $103,000,000 for first 5 years.
• Annual ROI:

(source: http://www.nrri.ohio-state.edu/programs/telcom/broadbandquery.php ):