DALLAS--Qwest Communications today announced new dedicated Internet access wholesale offerings at speeds from 2 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s, with the promise of 40 Gb/s on the horizon.

The new service can be ordered by Qwest wholesale customers in 1-Gig increments to meet booming demands for Internet access, said Derek Koecher, director of wholesale strategy and channel management. It is initially available in five cities, with six more to come by the end of the first quarter of 2008.As more service providers offer their customers broadband access and more of those customers download rich media content over the Internet, service providers need to upgrade their networks to deliver.

“Our customers also want to control their networks better,” Koecher said. “With more high-speed circuits going out to more facilities, this way, they can aggregate their traffic at the metro level into onto one pipe as opposed to 10.”

There could actually be demand for 40 Gb/s services today but the equipment customers need to buy for that service is still too expensive, said Roland Thornton, executive vice president of wholesale markets for Qwest.

Qwest also was touting its selection as number one in customer service and sales representatives among wholesale carriers by their customers, according to the annual Atlantic-ACM awards given out there this week. “Everyone provides the same technologies – or if they don’t have it now, they will this afternoon,” Thornton said. “We have put a focus on customer service, so we are proud to accept first place for the third time.”

Qwest has re-aligned it service centers to consolidate the in-region and out-of-region operations to give customer service reps a more complete customer view. It has pushed to put more information into its customer portal, and has created a national reporting tool that allows service managers and program managers to see a composite of the overall performance a customer is receiving, he said. “When we make a few more tweaks and implement firewalls, we will roll that out to our customers,” Thornton said. The company has already implemented a central quote desk for delivering high volume price quotes, and added data/IP experts to its sales and service manager rosters.