ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Privately-held American Fiber Systems, Incorporated, a metropolitan fiber-facilities based Broadband service provider serving carriers and large Enterprises, announced today that they remain unaffected by the recent FCC Triennial Review Remand Order. American Fiber Systems (AFS) anticipates continued growth as the result of the order and welcomes the clarification the order brings to the United States telecommunications economy.

“AFS was founded on the principle that owning metropolitan fiber-optic facilities represented the most sound and shareowner responsible strategy to have, given the tremendous amount of litigation since the Communications Act of 1996,” said Dave Rusin, President & CEO of AFS. “We fundamentally believed, in the long run, owning metropolitan fiber-facilities provides for a stalwart position in the market as regulatory and technological changes fluctuate.”

“The remand order is sending a clear signal to competitive industry participants,” Rusin added, “Whether by wire center and/or fiber collocated parameters; or by distinct route DS3/DS1 capacity limits, the FCC is clearly signaling it is now time to evolve to a true facilities based competitive environment.”

“Though it may not sit well with most mass market UNE-P providers and certain special access business models, the remand represents a fundamental change from garnering a livelihood solely from the ILEC, legal arguments aside.” said Rusin. “The remand provides more opportunity for sustainable competitive balance than anything we have been provided by the FCC over the past six years.”

AFS will continue to enable competition in the United States through the lease of its dense dark fiber optic metropolitan network assets and wholesale Ethernet IP services to any communications carrier. “We look forward to Wall Street recognizing the value of the remand relative to the intrinsic value of metropolitan fiber-optic outside plant and the enabling value-added role it plays in the convergence of traditional telephony services and burgeoning broadband services such as IP video and WiMax,” added Rusin. “I believe industry clarity is before us that demonstrate there are significant distinctions between long haul, oceanic and metropolitan fiber optic networks. Long haul fiber networks and oceanic fiber assets remain commodity in nature while metropolitan networks, by their very definition of complexity, services origination or termination capability, are differentiated and in short supply but serve as the lynch pin of true open market facilities-based competition.”

American Fiber Systems Inc. (AFS)