Products / Services

Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Columbia Capital Provide Financing to Leading IPTV Services Company

Reston, Virginia, May 15, 2007 - Avail Media, Inc., a provider of IPTV and advanced media services to broadband operators, today announced it has secured $17 million in Series-B venture financing. The round was co-led by Washington, D.C. area funds Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Columbia Capital, and will assist the quickly growing company as it expands its suite of services and brings on additional employees for operations and technology development. Avail Media was founded in early 2007 as the result of the merger between Auroras Entertainment and Broadstream Communications.

The company is led by CEO Ramu Potarazu, former CEO of Broadstream Communications and COO of Intelsat. Diane Smith, former CEO of Auroras Entertainment, serves as president.

Avail Media is the emerging leader in providing managed content services and technologies through a fully integrated head end infrastructure for the profitable deployment of IP video. Avail offers providers an ease of execution and a speed to market beyond any possible self-built system by continually adding new features and functionalities to its service offerings.

"Avail Media's solution allows IPTV content to be acquired directly from programmers in its full-resolution and unaltered format, encoded and encrypted, and finally transported to the customer via satellite," said Andrea Kaufman, partner at Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Avail Media board member. "Most impressive about the technology is that the IPTV content is delivered over a platform that allows distribution to multiple market segments including Telco, Cable and Advanced Media," Kaufman added.

"Under the leadership of Ramu Potarazu, Avail Media is poised to address the complex delivery network architecture that is required in the next generation of video entertainment," commented Columbia Capital partner and Avail Media board member Phil Herget. "Ramu's over 20 years of experience in the global telecommunications industry and his remarkable success at Intelsat give us great confidence that the company will compete well in its space," he added.

"Our technology will position us nicely as the distribution of IPTV content becomes more technically and operationally challenging. As convergence and Advanced Media applications become more relevant, the complete open architecture of the Avail platform will serve as our edge in the marketplace," remarked Ramu Potarazu, CEO, Avail Media. "Given both firms' working relationships within the telecommunications industry we believe that Novak Biddle and Columbia Capital will add strategic value as our business and the space continues to evolve," he also said.

Alongside Novak Biddle and Columbia Capital, Redwood Capital Group participated in the Auroras Entertainment and Broadstream Communications merger earlier this year

Founded in early 2007, Avail Media is the emerging leader in providing managed content services and technologies delivered through a fully integrated head end infrastructure, for the profitable deployment of IP video. Through a combination of best-of-breed technologies Avail Media offers a complete end-to-end platform to serve a broad array of customers. Avail Media possesses a large content rights library of over 300 channels from national programmers, including premier content from programmers such as ABC-Disney, Turner, NBC-Universal, MTV Networks, Fox Networks, and many others. Avail Media now offers the broadest and deepest set of services, technologies and solutions among its competitors. For more information, please visit www.availmedia.com.

Novak Biddle Venture Partners is a leading early stage venture capital firm focused on unique, cutting-edge technology investments in the Eastern United States, as well as targeted opportunities nationwide. With $580 million under management, Novak Biddle operates five venture funds that currently provide equity financing and management assistance to 42 portfolio companies. Novak Biddle continues to seek business situations where the combination of ideas, dollars, experience, and relationships can create long term, sustainable value. A sampling of companies funded by Novak Biddle include: RFID first-mover Matrics, voice over IP trailblazer Telogy, education technology leader Blackboard Inc. and intelligent video surveillance pioneer ObjectVideo. For more information, visit www.novakbiddle.com.

Columbia Capital is a venture capital firm specializing in the communications and information technology industries. Founded in 1989, Columbia Capital has helped establish more than 100 early stage ventures and currently manages more than $1.5 billion in capital. Columbia Capital has been an active participant in the wireless communications industry since its formative period nearly 20 years ago. In the wireless communications and entertainment categories specifically, Columbia Capital has been a founding investor in such notable successes as XM Satellite Radio, Nextel Communications, WNP Communications, Advanced Radio Telecom, NeoWorld Communications, and Digital Television Services. Columbia Capital has also helped establish numerous other successful wireless service providers including MetroPCS, Mobile Satellite Ventures, Revol Wireless, Coral Wireless, and WCS Wireless. For more information, visit Columbia Capital at www.colcap.com.

Alexandra McDougald
The Weiser Group
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