Qwest announced that upgrades to its backbone network through Alcatel-Lucent gear will soon allow them to offer 100 Gbps capacity at the edge. The new faster Ethernet based services will be delivered through Qwest’s iQ Networking and QWave brands. Qwest is targeting enterprise customers with the new offering. “Qwest is satisfying customers’ appetites for increasingly sophisticated applications while honoring the need to be more resource-efficient.” said Pieter Poll, CTO of Qwest.
Qwest is looking to beef up its most valuable asset, its national long haul network. They recently shopped this asset around, looking for a buyer, but took it off the market after receiving ‘inadequate’ bids. Since Qwest lacks a wireless network of their own, their long term future is closely tied to the success of their national network, which delivers services to more than 145 markets across the contiguous United States, and the enterprise applications it enables.
