Cavalier Telephone to Expand Its Service Area

Cavalier Telephone of Richmond plans to spend about $3 million to expand further into Northern Virginia and Maryland. The phone-service provider already has 28,900 residential and business customers in the Washington area, including in Alexandria, Falls Church, and the counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George’s.

It is expanding into Prince William and Loudoun counties and also plans to enter Fredericksburg, Norfolk and Columbia, selling local, long-distance and high-speed Internet service starting June 15. Cavalier decided to follow the demand into those growing areas, said Andy Lobred, a spokesman for the company. The company already owns a fiber-optic network in those areas, he said.
    
Tech Council of Maryland gave its Bio Product of the Year award to Flavorx Inc., a Bethesda firm that makes flavorings for prescription medicines.
Tech Council of Maryland gave its Bio Product of the Year award to Flavorx Inc., a Bethesda firm that makes flavorings for prescription medicines. (By Bill O’leary -- The Washington Post)

Cavalier, founded in 1999, operates in seven markets in five states and the District. It has invested more than $250 million to build a new network and competes primarily with Verizon Communications. Cavalier bought Net2000 Communications Inc. of Herndon as that company was about to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002.

VIRGINIA

Long and Foster Cos. purchased land in Chantilly for a new 280,000-square-foot, five-story corporate headquarters. The operator of the nation’s largest independently owned real estate company, which now has an 81,000-square-foot headquarters west of Fairfax City, said the new building is scheduled for completion in spring 2008.

SteelCloud of Dulles, which provides computer security products and consulting, said it launched its SteelCloud Audit Compliance System. The software documents the security of information technology systems to meet the requirements of government regulations, including the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

DISTRICT

One Metro Center , a 421,000-square-foot building at 701 13th Street NW, was purchased by ING Clarion of New York for an undisclosed sum from an affiliate of Tishman Speyer Properties of New York. In another deal, Trizec Properties Inc. of Chicago paid $190 million for 1200 K St. NW. The seller was Prudential Real Estate Investors. Cassidy & Pinkard represented the sellers in both transactions.

InPhonic , an online seller of wireless services and phones, reached an agreement with Hawaiian Telcom, the state’s largest telecommunications provider, to provide systems to handle activation, billing and customer service for the launch of its wireless voice and data services. Terms were not disclosed. The former Verizon Hawaii was renamed Hawaiian Telcom last week with the close of its $1.6 billion sale to District-based Carlyle Group.

MARYLAND

Tech Council of Maryland announced these awards for 2005: Entrepreneur of the Year, Mark Anstey, president of DataStream Content Solutions LLC of College Park; IT Product of the Year, SourceFire Inc. of Columbia for its SourceFire 3D Systems; Bio Product of the Year, Flavorx Inc. of Bethesda for its Flavorx product; Firm of the Year, Social and Scientific Systems Inc. of Silver Spring; Executive of the Year, Linda Gooden, president of Lockheed Martin Information Technology in Seabrook.

Merkle is the new name of Merkle Direct Marketing Inc. of Lanham, which said the change reflects its growth beyond direct marketing into a full-service database marketing agency.

Apatoff Peters is a new law firm that combines the practices of principals Adam Apatoff and Craig Peters. The firm will have offices in Rockville and Bethesda and specialize in technology, tax, corporate and estate-planning matters.

Leading Edge Design & Systems of Severn, which provides intelligence applications, technologies and integration services, has acquired E-Secure Systems Inc., a privately held information technology security services provider based in Columbia.