With the acquisition of PAETEC under its belt, the company talks up strong service capabilities.

Windstream built its portfolio services through acquisitions and in late 2011, Windstream made a strategic move that shifted the company's focus by acquiring $2.3 billion telecommunications services provider PAETEC (Video here). Windstream claims they provide the personalized service that other providers don't offer. Windstream has 15,000 employees, 100,000 miles of route fiber, 13 SAS 70 Type II compliant data centers across the country, and provides service to 75 percent of the Fortune 500 companies (with 450,000 business customers nationwide). The have $6B in revenue and approximately 70% of their customers are enterprise. The acquisition of PAETEC provides enterprise-level expertise, enhancing Windstream's portfolio of services, including cloud computing, disaster recovery, managed services, networking, VoIP, and other services. When speaking with Pat Herron, Vice President of Enterprise Product Marketing for Windstream, I wasn't too surprised by what Pat told me about Windstream’s core business, having just met with a customer contemplating giving Verizon the boot. Pat discussed how Windstream concentrates on those enterprise users that are neglected because they don’t meet the spend criteria by AT&T and Verizon. In fact, my customer validated the same recently after having lived with MPLS network issues that Verizon remained firmly stuck-in-stupid on for months.

What is interesting is the depth and range of services that Windstream offers. CenturyLink (formerly Century Telephone) is what I thought was a good comparative against Windstream. What I learned from Pat was, while they appear to offer the same services their key difference is that CenturyLink acquired cable plant while Windstream acquired services. So this is a notable difference and I think will be a plus for SMBs that seek something better and yet, lack the spend commitments to get decent service.

I asked Pat about their three key differentiators and Pat said Windstream remains committed to their sweet spot providing services to customers in the $2k-10K monthly spends, driving service and maintaining the business portfolio of services. They already provide service to 80% of the Fortune 500 companies. Windstream also owns Allworx and maintains an interconnect service delivering Avaya, Cisco and Shoretel solutions. Their hosted telephony solutions include Broadsoft and the cool piece of intel that Pat shared with me is that Windstream is near completion of a data center build in McLean, VA. This is our area and for my customer it could mean an alternative to the data center in Ashburn, VA and possibly benefits. Distance is often played down but I think the reduction in any latency can’t hurt. What I look forward to is having a key carrier not just to provide service, but one that is willing to service. Windstream may just be the shot in the arm for the SMB/Es that want something more than just a guarantee that they will get their monthly bill.