QWEST, which has over the past three years been digging into the VoIP space, evaluating suppliers and building an all IP based network announced yesterday they have deployed OneFlex for the business market.
Given they are both a Regional Bell Carrier and a Nationwide long distance supplier on the telco side, and global carrier on the IP data side, they are ideally positioned to reach the business market in direct competition to Sprint and AT&T.
The question is, will they be able to sell it? As a longtime Qwest Long Distance customer I have seen my account experience go from a dedicated Account Executive down to that of dealing with a call center. This is how AT&T lost my business to QWEST, for as my telecommunications needs grew in the 90s, and continue to, I was getting less and less being presented to me and what’s worse, put into a labyrinth of departments that were for the most part outsourced or seemed so.
The same sales leadership is in place at QWEST that used to be at AT&T. I don’t have a dedicated account team, and my limited use of Qwest at this point (two toll free numbers) and one back up phone line’s long distance is dropping each month as I use a combination of SBC for local with unlimited long distance on my home line, and AT&T’s CallVantage or Vonage for IP calls and International.
I’m sure QWEST has its focus not on the small or SOHO, but the big fish of corporate America. But if their sales engine isn’t in gear, and those folks are being treated the same way as my business is, well, OneFlex may need to be more flexible than planned before all of the USA is really thinking QWEST is the company that they originally positioned themselves to be.