I met this week with Rob Hale, CEO of Granite Telecommunications. Granite Telecom is an enterprise wireline wholesaler specializing in providing consolidated billing and service for multi-location businesses: 3/4 million lines from Verizon, Qwest, AT&T; and others to 10,000 customers in over 100,000 locations. The company was established in 2002 and ranked in the Inc. 500 in 2007 and 2008: revenues in 2009 are expected to approach $400M. Customers include USPS, Walmart, CVS, 7-Eleven, McDonalds, Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, GE and over half the Fortune 100. Interestingly Rob’s previous business, Network Plus (NPLS), was also a telecom wholesaler, growing from its inception in 1990 to a public IPO in 1999 to 300,000 lines, 75,000 customers and $284M sales before overspending on network hardware, being forced into bankruptcy in February 2002 and having its assets sold to Broadview Networks for $16M. Granite was started four months later and is still debt free.