Rothstein Kass  

Business Need

"Our main business drivers for this were during the end of 2005. We were moving our facilities, and as part of that we were rolling out a new voice over IP phone system, and since we were planning on also including that with all of our offices across the nation utilizing the same system--we needed to have an MPLS [multi-protocol label switching] network is really what it came down to, so we could get that quality of service between all of our sites. And the provider we were using at the time, other than some just general displeasure with it, they did not offer the level of service we needed to really carry our VoIP solution. And also, depending on the area of the country we were in, we didn't always have the same provider. So we really wanted a single solution provider across the country with all of our offices to help keep track of everything from billing and really just single point of contact for any issues we had. And we wanted to leverage our VoIP solution. A majority of our equipment would be in our headquarters office, based in New Jersey, and we did not want to have redundant systems in every single office, so we wanted to really minimize the amount of equipment we needed in each of our offices, leverage the main components in our headquarters office here, and that really is what pushed us to look into new providers."

Why Qwest

"There's a few different reasons. The quality of the solution was really one of the big drivers. Just going through with each of the providers that ended up in our top three, Qwest really seemed to have the most pure MPLS design and it wasn't a combination of various technologies that were kind of built up over time. It really seemed to be, from the ground up, built as an MPLS solution.

They also offered the ability to work in all of the areas of the country we were in. They were there--again, it goes back to our wanting to have a single point of contact for all of our sites.

We also, as part of the RFP process and follow-up, checked with references and referrals. In our industry, there were other accounting firms that have used Qwest and we approached them, discussed what their experience was, got some good feedback from them.

Also, the end-to-end quality of service was very important because of our VoIP and our other technologies that we want to roll out. The knowledge of the account team that came out; they knew what we were looking for. They were very knowledgeable in everything that we needed and they were able to answer our questions. And finally, while all of that's important, it was also the price of the solution, which was very important as well."

Customer Service

"Customer service has been very good. Obviously, with any type of Internet provider, anybody--whether it's Qwest, Verizon, what have you--there's going to be times where you have issues. And you know, we have had some sites with downages. Most of the time it's been local carrier issues, but there have been a few that have been directly related to a Qwest problem, and we've always had the best experience with them. They take ownership of the problems and they work through with us. Communication's very good, but none of them were ever solved with, say, a single call--you know, you call up and it's done in the next minute. But through their escalation process, once it gets to the appropriate level of person, the problems are usually resolved very quickly. The technical competence of the people that we deal with is always very high. Sometimes you have to go through maybe a first tier of support to get to that area, but once you get that person on the line, it's usually resolved very quickly."