Extracta Group and Mercury Access Form Strategic Alliance to Accelerate Migration from Copper to Fiber for Telcos

● Extracta goes beyond pure salvage, and provides Turn-Key copper retirement program “that pays for itself”

● “Hidden” copper assets have increased in value over the last year by over 20%

Miami, FL and Reston, VA, May 13, 2024 – Extracta Group, LLC and Mercury Access Group, LLC are excited to announce the formation of a strategic alliance aimed at revolutionizing the migration from copper-based legacy networks to next generation fiber platforms. Extracta has an advanced process to remove abandoned, underutilized, and oversized copper cables occupying thousands of miles of underground conduits, aerial telecom spaces, and costly real estate used in legacy exchange centers. The synergy between the intellectual property and end-to-end processes perfected and performed by Extracta, and Mercury Access’ operations leadership, deep civil-works knowledge, and access in the TMT (Telecom, Media, and Technology) industry, is a unique combination.

The Case for Copper Decommissioning With businesses and consumers worldwide demanding symmetric and seamless streams of high-speed data/video via fiber, copper-based distribution plants that are several decades old not only fall short given its narrow-band qualities, but block critical raceway systems. Concurrently, maintenance costs caused by ever-growing outages, scarcity of spare parts, dwindling copper knowledge in the organizations, and vandalism tied to the value of copper, are challenging telecom leadership. There is now a very compelling operations improvement and economic case for corporations to finally retire old copper cables.

The strategic alliance expects to expand Extracta’s client base and capture significant market share as more telecom operators are driven to free-up valuable real estate in underground and aerial spaces to deploy new broadband infrastructure. With Extracta’s experience in monetizing copper assets at market prices, their clients immediately recover a source of funds from a “hidden asset,” which has significantly increased in value over the last year by over 20%. Extracta’s clients immediately benefit from stranded or “hidden asset” sales, while realizing cost savings from mitigating conduit lease fees related to stranded copper cables. In addition, this provides valuable real estate on existing poles or emptied conduits in their serving area for fiber expansion. Replacing obsolete copper cables with robust state-of-the-art fiber cables will “leap-frog” Extracta’s clients into a new form of competitive advantage.

Given the favorable regulatory environment to accelerate broadband expansion, especially in the U.S., telecom operators are leveraging copper network retirements and related asset sales to help fund state-of-the-art fiber networks in all geographic areas of the market, from urban to rural locations.

Extracta’s Track Record for a Successful and Profitable Copper Retirement A well-coordinated decommissioning program is a core competency of Extracta. This allows telecom operators to focus on growing and retaining their customer base. Extracta works cooperatively with telecom operators to execute customized programs on a case-by-case basis covering everything from re-engineering and circuit migration, and/or immediate extraction of abandoned cables. Extracta’s value-added expertise in logistics and the global metals markets provides telecom operators with a Turn-Key approach that allows clients to focus on their main business.

“This strategic partnership will accelerate the opportunity to capture market share in the copper extraction effort underway at all of the major telecom operators,” said Antonio Belfort, co-founder and CEO of Extracta. Our goal is to continue improving our methods to gain scale, while offering all aspects of a successful program for our customers, including network engineering, supply chain, and ultimate copper asset sales to help fuel broadband growth.”

“We have spent several years improving our copper extraction processes in the field, and believe that these lessons learned give us a clear advantage and differentiation over traditional salvage companies,” added Alberto Scharffenorth, co-founder and COO of Extracta. “Our value-added service aims to improve the net profitability of the entire project. We offer basic extraction and monetization services, all the way up to a complete solution that includes network migration of traffic, depending on the client’s needs. This skill set allows us to fully customize the project in cooperation with our customers.”

“This is a win/win that doesn’t come around that often,” stated Peter D. Aquino, Founding Partner of Mercury Access Group. “The Mercury team is highly motivated to partner with Extracta to execute on its mission to accelerate growth. We view this strategic alliance as a massive opportunity to be one of the first movers to provide telecom companies across the U.S. and abroad with an operational solution that pays for itself. There is so much stranded copper deployed in the ground and on poles over the last 100 years, blocking access for new fiber deployments, that this is now becoming a major focus for telecom operators of all sizes. We are just in the beginning of a huge undertaking by the industry, and we are excited to be part of the solution.”

For more information about Extracta and Mercury Access projects and expertise, visit www.extractagroup.com and www.mercuryaccess.com. About Extract Group, LLC Extracta Group, LLC is an organization based in the United States with international reach specialized and focused on helping telecom operators with legacy copper-based networks to phase them out towards migration to New Generation Broadband Service Platforms. Extracta has developed a comprehensive program that encompasses the entire cycle from planning and engineering, to asset monetization using proprietary methods, software and equipment under a unique business proposition.

About Mercury Access Group, LLC Mercury Access Group is an operating executive-level management team for global Telecommunications, Media & Technology (TMT) opportunities: sourcing, assessing, and/or managing either transactions, workouts, and/or turnarounds and providing timely strategic management consulting.

Mercury Access Media Contact: Sheetal Werneke Phone no: 1-866-695-3629 ext. 4 jsa_mercury@jsa

Extracta Media Contact:

Alberto Scharffenorth Email: ascharff@extractagroup.com Phone no.: 1-503-999-2238

‍