Kevin O'Connor, CEO of Tech Valley Communications

Formed in 1999 during the CLEC boom, Tech Valley is the lone facilities-based survivor in Upstate New York's Tech Valley around Albany. The company, which provides voice and data services to businesses and residential users using Optical Solutions' platform, competes directly with Citizens Communications, Fairpoint Communications and Verizon. CEO Kevin O'Connor recently spoke with Vince Vittore about the future of the business and Tech Valley's shifting views.

About the company's shifting position in the market: We started out in the late '90s, and we're the product of a group of local companies. Today, we find ourselves in a market where we provide service primarily to business. But we also provide service to students in dorms, which we view as residential. We are predominantly facilities based, and we made a decision this year that we're really going to try to build our connections right into our customer premises.

On the economics: It's hard to explain the value of getting off the [unbundled network element platform]. The last mile we were leasing from Verizon is not a model that works for our company. Even on the best day, that's a difficult model to work under. In this part of New York state, the copper plant up here is horrendous. In certain communities, we still have tin and lead cables We've rolled out a Gigabit PON product that we're using to connect to businesses in eight specific areas. Right now, it's voice and data services, but it can support video feeds.

On targeting the largest customers first: As we build the glass to serve these large customers, we purposely built this glass through high-density businesses. We took the model of acquiring those large customers and using their pockets to fund a large network. The key to that was the architecture. We crafted the network such that we went by anything we wanted to get in the future.