Qwest Powers Cancer Treatment Centers

The newly opened Cancer Treatment Centers of America hospital known as Western Regional Medical Center located in Goodyear, AZ is depending on a high-speed networking solution designed by Qwest to “help deliver a fully integrated, patient-centered treatment experience that combines traditional, state-of-the-art medical treatments with scientifically supported complementary therapies.”

The network was designed to provide the CTCA patient care team reliable, real-time access to medical imaging, patient records, and sophisticated health care applications.

Chad Eckes, CEO at Cancer Treatment Centers of America stated, “At CTCA, we are constantly looking for ways to improve patient care for those living with cancer. Qwest’s first-class communications solution enables the new facility to deliver leading-edge medical technology and innovative medical therapy in a manner that increases operational efficiencies and reduces costs and paper.”

Reduced costs and increases in the efficiency of operations at hospitals or clinics can result from consolidated technology handled on a single platform. With underlying optical connectivity, Qwest’s network has the capacity to support rates of up to 40 GB per second. Offering the best in service level agreements and access speeds, Qwest has one of the most advanced networks available and provides services to businesses and government groups throughout the United States.

Executive Vice President of Qwest Business Markets Group, Teresa Taylor stated, “Information technology solutions are improving the quality of health care for Americans – a fact that has been widely recognized by the nation’s leading health care providers and the new administration in Washington. Hospitals like CTCA are using affordable, tailored solutions from Qwest to improve patient care and quality of life while also increasing operational efficiency.”

Enabling the hospital to also digitally store and retrieve patient records instantly and meet compliance requirements set by HIPAA, Qwest has also provided a private fiber ring supported by two separate Qwest offices. If one of the offices happens to have some type of failure, the network traffic would be routed to the other office.

Rakesh Patel, director of IT for CTCA said, “As part of our commitment to delivering a high standard of care to patients across the CTCA network, we must ensure the systems that support quality care and patient safety as well as administrative processes are available 100 percent of the time.”

Qwest Offers Personal Digital Vault

Qwest Communications is now offering its high-speed Internet customers with a free secure way to protect their most valuable digital content from hard-drive damage and computer crashes. Offering encrypted, offsite protection, the online backup service known as Qwest Personal Digital Vault™, allows users to feel a little less worried about losing valuable digital content.

To get the free 2 GB online vault space, Qwest customers can visit www.qwest.com/digital vault. Customers have the ability to access their Qwest Personal Digital Vault™ account from anywhere to get the backed-up data by entering an appropriate username and password.

Nell E. Cox, Qwest Executive Vice President of Product and IT said, “Special photos, videos and correspondence lost to a hard-drive crash, computer theft or damage means a big emotional loss. Home computers and hard drives will eventually fail, and the best use of Qwest Personal Digital Vault™ is to back up these important digital keepsakes for when that time comes.”

Features of the online backup vault include automated and customized backup scheduling, file restore and complete restore, manual settings, anytime, anywhere access, and for customers wanting to back up more than 2 GB worth of digital content, additional space is available.

With the automated and customizable backup scheduling, newer files and versions are sure to be safe with the scheduled automatic backups. In addition to the scheduling feature, with file restore and complete restore customers have the ability to access their backed-up content even if external thumb-drives, hard-drives or CDs are damaged.

For $6.99 per month, customers can sign up for 50 GB of vault space, and for just $9.99 per month, customers will receive unlimited vault space. More than 15% on monthly rates can be saved when a 12-month term is purchased with unlimited vault space. To get more info, customers can visit Qwest’s Get in the Loop Blog at www.internetcommunity.qwest.com.

Qwest Appoints Todd Townsend

Qwest Communications recently announced that Vance “Todd” Townsend will be the new Vice President of Marketing. Townsend will be overseeing the company’s consumer marketing strategy and operations. Within these efforts, Qwest is looking to boost efforts in several areas of the company, including promoting Qwest’s broadband, digital voice, wireless and video services.

Townsend will be joining the company on Feb. 3; he will be based in Denver Colorado, and will report to Dan Yost, who is the Executive Vice President of Qwest’s Mass Markets Organization.

Regarding Townsend and his recent hiring, Yost made these comments:

“Todd understands how to execute a robust and effective go-to-market effort, but more importantly, he recognizes that all work at Qwest starts with perfecting the customer experience, and that’s the best foundation to have.”

Townsend’s most recent job was with Sonic Corp., where he worked as Chief Marketing Officer for the restaurant chain. While working for Sonic Corp., he led the company’s consumer advertising, field marketing and strategic marketing efforts.

Prior to joining Sonic Corp., Townsend served as Yahoo’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the online portal operator’s hosting and e-commerce services group. He has also held various executive marketing roles with Sprint Corp.

Townsend also brings considerable agency experience to Qwest. He has overlooked and supervised accounts for Leo Burnett Worldwide, including Miller Brewing Company and the Pillsbury Company. He has a master’s degree in advertising from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Oklahoma State University.

Qwest is excited to begin working with Townsend, knowing that his experience and energetic attitude to make Qwest one of the leaders in communication services in the U.S. will be an extremely valuable asset to the company.

Qwest Asking for Portion of Stimulus Package

Qwest Communications is asking the federal government for a portion of the planned economic stimulus package to increase the high-speed Internet access in unserved areas. The proposal from the company asks that an unspecified amount of money be set aside to allow the company to achieve broadband availability that is 7 megabits per second or faster to 95% of each state served nationwide.

Qwest’s Colorado President, Chuck Ward, who helped in writing the proposal, is optimistic that the broadband expansion will be a part of the Obama administration’s proposed infrastructure spending. “It certainly satisfies the stimulus program’s objective, and that’s putting people to work,” Ward said.

Because Qwest isn’t quite sure what areas aren’t reached by certain service providers, the company doesn’t know how much money the proposal would require. Ward does know, however, that the cost would run into the billions.

In the upgrade of its existing infrastructure in 23 cities to make its network capable of offering download speeds between 7 Mbps or 20 Mbps the company spent $300 million. That upgrade was made last year. Building a new network, however, is far more costly given the greater distances and the creation of a completely new structure of fiber optic cable.

 

According to Qwest, the construction of the new network will not only create jobs and help telecommunications employment, but it will bridge the gap between the rural and urban parts of the US.

Seven Mbps is considered by Qwest to be the speed at which movie and song downloading is quick enough to satisfy customers. Qwest’s letter to the administration said, “…while many urban areas have multiple broadband service providers, competitive prices, and speeds in excess of 7 Mbps, many rural areas lack even the most basic broadband offerings.”

Qwest Reconnecting SkyWi

A chain of events has led to Qwest being ordered to reconnect SkyWi. Initially, Qwest claimed that SkyWi owed them $1.7 million for services, and as a result of not getting paid, Qwest started to shut down the Internet provider’s services and its subsidiaries (One Connect IP, Zianet). This move left many business owners without a phone line, and without any warning. This affected many facets of communities in Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, whether residential or business. All in all, approximately 10,000 customers were disconnected. Now, the Public Regulation Commission of New Mexico has ordered Qwest to reinstate SkyWi services, until the pending federal lawsuit is resolved.

The statement issued by Jack Leach, CEO of SkyWi and One Connect, said “We believe that we are under attack by Qwest Communications. SkyWi filed a lawsuit against Qwest in federal court in New Mexico earlier in December regarding Qwest’s predatory, anti-competitive, and unfair trade practices. Qwest has now decided to discontinue the services it has provided SkyWi.”

To refute this statement, Qwest stated, “SkyWi's outrageous claims are false. This case is a simple dispute over charges that One Connect, and now SkyWi, owes but has not paid: One Connect/SkyWi ordered services from Qwest, Qwest provided them, and One Connect/SkyWi has not paid for them.”

As aftermath of the shut down, Leach said, “There is still a great deal of damage rendered to our customers' businesses by their actions, however, and we must now work very hard for our customers in order to rebuild their trust in our services and our company. We made a reasonable and fair offer to Qwest to avoid interruption of services until these hearings took place. But that offer was refused by Qwest. They left us no alternative but to seek help in order to protect our customers from further damage to their businesses. Even so, the repercussions of an interruption on this scale will be felt for quite some time.”