Pulse Broadband, the St. Louis-based fiber optic contractor led by long-time cable executive Bill Shreffler, has completed its initial round of capital funding.
Financial terms of the deal, led by West Park Investors with an additional round of funding by Broadband Venture Partners, were not disclosed.
Shreffler founded Pulse late last year after serving stints as CEO of Broadstripe (formerly Millennium Digital Media) and as COO of Cebridge Connections (now Suddenlink Communications). Shreffler is a 30-year veteran of the cable industry and has served as a regional operations executive at Charter Communications. Shreffler left Broadstripe in July 2008, several months before the St. Louis-based MSO filed for bankruptcy protection.
Pulse will focus on working with rural electric co-ops and the like to help them bring broadband to rural areas and the company has a unique fiber to the home solution (patented by EVP and chief strategic officer Dave Pangrac) to help customers do just that. Pangrac is a veteran of Time Warner Cable and helped the media giant develop its hybrid-fiber-coax system which was later adopted by the entire cable industry.
Pulse chief marketing officer Rudy Tober said that the company is currently working with several rural electric co-ops, adding that many of its clients and potential customers will be looking to build rural networks as part of the Broadband Technology Opportunities program, the $7.2 billion federal initiative to bring high-speed Internet to the hinterlands.
In a statement, Shreffler said that the money raised fully funds Pulse's business model and will allow it to "significantly ramp up our scope of services."
