eLEC Communications has signed a letter of intent to acquire Colorado-based Liberty Bell Telecom, LLC, a local and long-distance company born from the frustrations of radio and television consumer advocate Tom Martino, who is also company founder.

eLEC, a telecom holding company, has two other subsidiaries: VoX Communications and New Rochelle Telephone. Celebration, Fla.-based VoX Communications is a wholesale provider of broadband voice, origination and termination services as well as an enhanced VoIP telephone service provider to small businesses and consumers. New Rochelle Telephone provides local and long-distance services to residential and small business customers in New York State and Pennsylvania.

Liberty Bell's president, Jay Weber, will assume an executive management position within eLEC.

Begun in response to what Martino perceived as poor service from the incumbents, the company enjoys one of the best customer acquisition and retention models in the industry, according to Paul Riss, CEO of eLEC. Liberty Bell generated $5 million of revenue in 2005 and had net profits last quarter of more than $150,000. Martino will become a stockholder in eLEC and will remain with Liberty Bell to help roll out its new voice-over-IP service offerings.

“Martino has a perfect reference for consumers because he is representing them to the industry,” said Michael Khalilian, chief technology officer at eLEC. “So he has a model telephone company in terms of quality of service, response time to consumers and packaging of services.”

Martino is known for promoting reliable businesses on his nationally syndicated radio show and includes VoX Communications among them.

Data on the number of subscribers for Liberty was unavailable, as were the cost of the acquisition and the number of employees at Liberty. However, Khalilian did say all Liberty employees would stay on board.

“We aren’t losing a single person and we plan to grow,” he said.

In addition to a focus on customer service, Khalilian said that the quality-of-service differentiation in the VoX network comes largely from its use of Linux, which gives the company an enterprise level quality for both business and residential customers.

Liberty also has intentions of going national and believes the eLEC acquisition will provide them that opportunity.

The acquisition is expected to be complete within 90 days.