Wesley Homes  

Business Need

"The answer is very simple: Wesley Homes, who for 63 years has been a single campus, 42-acre retirement center in Des Moines, Washington, was opening about 10 miles away a second campus, another retirement center, and that presented to us the need to be able to combine communications, exchange data, and actually make everything a single communications system. If we had not worked out the solution that we ultimately ended up with, it would certainly cost us more money without being able to combine everything into a single program, but operational control, exchange of data, instantaneous communications, broadband spectrum, ability to combine several different data feeds into a single system was paramount."

Why Qwest

"Well, there are really two separate issues, but as a customer, both of those issues are paramount to me. One, over the years we have always had, at one time or another, a very good working relationship with Qwest. Part of the way not too many years ago, as you will recall, my friends at the federal court level decided that we were going to break telecommunications up and prohibited, for instance, Qwest from offering long-distance service, and so this forced us to fragment our communications with a lot of different people, which turned out to be an administrative nightmare, a service nightmare, and extremely expensive--and we wanted to avoid that. Our relationship with Qwest had always been that Qwest delivered what they promised, but the other thing that was important to us is that Qwest is the tariff carrier for this area. Some of the things we wanted to accomplish, by law, I guess Qwest would have to sublease space and facilities to a competitor to serve my needs--but why, as a business, do I want to inject a third party when I don't have to?

As important as the customer service and the company that delivers it you have to have a product that will support the communications need. The nice thing about QMOE is that the pipe is almost unbelievably expandable and within the confines of just paying for the one circuit where we are using fiber optics we can now subdivide that fiber internally ourselves using virtual local area networks (VLANs) or by VPNing (virtual private network) into dedicated areas on the other side. The QMOE is broadband enough that it is almost impossible for us to conceivably choke it out in the next year or two."

Customer Service

"First of all, most times we don't need them. Now Qwest checks in with me fairly often. Once or twice a month, my salesman will call to see how things are going. I mentioned my project manager has done a lot of work for us with Qwest--CG3 is, I believe, her assignment. Very proactive in staying in touch with me to see if they can do anything else. I must tell you as a side note, because I put my money where my mouth is, that with the switch in Qwest being able to offer full service, I've switched all my long distance, I've switched my personal Internet--everything--my TV package, everything at my home is through Qwest because if I get great service at work, why not enjoy the same privilege at the house?"