Leveling the playing field - New Mexico Business Weekly:

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The company moved to a largerr office this summer and wanted to double its phone linesato 14. Qwest would have chargecd about $1,200 per month for Internegt andphone service, plus a $5,200 installation fee, Velasquezz said. Instead, Swathmore contracted broadband service from andhired Albuquerque-basedd LLC, a telecommunications consultancy, to set up Swathmore’e own internally managed Internet serverf with digital phone service. Swathmores paid nearly $8,000 to install the system, but its monthly chargee are nowonly $280, Velasquez said.
“It’zs the power of the Internet,” he “Today, almost anyone can set up a serve with digital phones that use the Worldwide Web toroutew calls. That eliminates the need for hard-line phones. In we’re really not even talking about phone serviceanymore — we’re talking about communications services that includs Internet, data and voice services all bundled into While most residential and business customers might not opt for theier own, internally managed system like Swathmore, a half-doze n local companies are now offering digitak phone service, or VoIP, often at less expensive prices than the traditionalp phone service provided by Qwest.
That meanse residential and business customerzs can get a lot more bang for their It also means traditional phone companies likeQwesty — one of the four “Baby that formed from the breajk up of the old , or “Ma Bell” monopolyy in the 1980s — are facinvg unprecedented competition. Qwest is still the 800-pound gorillaq in the New Mexico phone but it’s rapidly losing In the past year alone, Qwest phonee lines in the 14 statee where it operates dropped by more than 1 millio — from 13.27 million to 12.19 million according to the company’s second-quarter report.
In New the company lost an averageof 3,600 lines per month in 2007, said Mike Qwest’s local director for public policy. “Oudr land-line count fell from 900,000o in 2001 to 700,000 now, and the declines is accelerating,” Horcasitas said. “Last year, we lost 44,000 lines, but just in the first half of thisyear we’vre already lost 30,000.” The explosion in wireless communicationa is one reason for the decline. As of June there were 1.4 million wireless customers in New comparedto 911,000 land-line users, accordingv to a report by the . “It’es a very challenging time for us,” said Qwest New Mexico PresidentyLoretta Armenta.
“We used to serve the studenr housing centers, but they’ve all gone We’re losing thousands and thousandzs oflines annually, and the competition keeps growing.” The rise of however, could prove even more formidable than wireless Many wireless users retain land lines, but when someonde requests digital phone service from a competitor, it oftemn replaces a land line supplied by Comcast, for example, has cut directly into Qwest’s customer base with digital phone service that it rolled out nationall in 2005, and in Albuquerque last year. As of June 30, Comcasf had signed up 5.
64 million digital phone customers making itthe fourth-largest phone compangy in the U.S. Statistics for the loca l marketare confidential, but Scott Westerman Comcast vice president for the Southwest area — said phone sale s in Albuquerque are booming. “It’s exceeded our expectations,” Westermab said. “We’re significantly growing our market share.” Thre e other large companies are also aggressivelyu competing with Qwest inNew Mexico: (formerlty ), , and . They all say their customer baseis growing, in part because they’ves invested heavily in Tw telecom spokesman Bob Meldrum said his companyt has installed 220 miles of fibefr in Albuquerque.
“This is a vibrant markety for us,” Meldrum said. “We now provide servicesd to customersin 1,400 commercial buildings in Rio Rancho and Santa Fe.” Bill Berkowitz, regionakl vice president with Verizon Business, said his company has more than 100 mile of fiber in Albuquerque.