After being primarily a telephone service provider for years, Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc. these days is focusing on attracting broadband customers, which it now sees as its emphasis for growth here.

"From 10 years ago to now we've continued to see tough competition, and we've continued to lose the land lines," says Tom Novotney, the company's director of operations for portions of a four-state area that includes Eastern Washington. Though the company still views basic telephone service as an important part of its services, broadband Internet service is its focus now, Novotney says.

To attract more broadband customers, this year Qwest launched a capital project to extend fiber-optic lines to neighborhoods to increase dramatically the broadband speed it can offer to residential customers. This year alone, it's spending $300 million to extend fiber-optic lines to neighborhoods in 23 markets in its 14-state service area, including some areas in Spokane, although Novotney declines to say how much the company is spending in Spokane.

"Typically, fiber optics has been used for long-haul high-speed transport from Spokane to Seattle or Spokane to Yakima. Now, we're making a tremendous investment in placing the fiber-optic cable to the neighborhood," he says.

The project is expected to enable customers to buy broadband Internet service with download speeds of up to 40 megabits per second, and 20 Mbps for uploads.

"Our current standard is 1.5 Mbps," with top speeds of about 7 Mbps for residential customers, Novotney says.

The current capital expenditures are indicative of how Qwest has worked to retool itself since the days of land lines and dial-up Internet, he says.

"Over the last 10 years, there has been a huge transition in the industry," Novotney says.

Ten years ago, he says, there was a big demand for so-called "land lines," or copper telephone lines, as people set up second lines to have dedicated dial-up access to the Internet for their computers or bought separate lines for teenagers.

Now, use of Qwest's land lines is waning, he says. Over the years, people increasingly have switched from land-line service to cellular service, and many businesses have switched to voice-over-IP telephone systems. Novotney says that cellular service drives much of residential customers' decision-making on what services to buy now.

Now people primarily seek broadband Internet and wireless phone service, and if money gets tight, more are likely to discontinue their land line than their wireless service, he says.

To attract and keep customers, Qwest has teamed up with other providers, including Verizon Wireless and DirecTV Inc., to offer package deals that include regular phone service, wireless service, and satellite TV service. Consumers are more likely to stay with a company and to buy more services if they can get everything from one umbrella provider and pay one bill, Novotney says.

Qwest also is offering its residential broadband customers online digital backup services for pictures and data stored on their home computers.

"We are trying to establish our broadband network," Novotney says.

Though within the Spokane area its roughly 200,000 customers are largely residential, Qwest also provides an array of services to business and institutional customers.

Novotney says the Spokane County Library District, for example, recently implemented a computer network system through Qwest that allows its 100,000 library users to reserve materials via the Internet. Qwest also recently set up what's known as a cyber center in Western Washington for Spokane-based Sterling Savings for the bank's disaster recovery program.

Qwest sets up networks and hosts data for its corporate customers, and its wi-fi service is available in businesses such as Starbucks coffee shops and Barnes & Noble bookstores here, Novotney says.

Qwest also has gotten leaner here. Advances in technology have allowed it to do more with fewer people, and the Denver-based company currently employs about 160 people in Spokane, including engineering staff, construction staff, and installation maintenance technicians, Novotney says. In 2002, it employed more than 330 people in Spokane and Deer Park.

It occupies a facility that encompasses about one city block near Gonzaga University, at 904 N. Columbus. Recently, it consolidated its operations staff at that location, selling a building it owned on Spokane Street east of downtown and giving up a leased building in Spokane Valley, Novotney says. It still has about 15 buildings in Spokane County that serve as switching stations, including its large building at 501 W. Second, where staff members work to oversee the switching station. The network is pushed out from the more central locations and the switching stations are places where fiber or cable comes in and calls or data are switched out in different directions to homes and businesses in the area. It also has about 50 unmanned buildings that each are roughly 400 square feet in size and contain equipment and climate-control systems.

Higher speeds

This year, the biggest focus for the company here has been expanding the fiber network to bring faster Internet speeds to residential customers. Novotney says the fiber lines run out from its satellite switching stations to a "node" in each neighborhood that typically serves about 300 houses, bringing high-speed Internet capability to that neighborhood. From each node, copper wire that already was serving the individual homes connects the homes to the fiber lines.

"From a geography standpoint, we've covered the Valley area, the Northwest area of Spokane, around the Shadle Park area, and some on the Five Mile area near Indian Trail," Novotney says.

The fiber-optic implementation will be a long process, though, he says, adding that it's unclear how long it will take to bring higher Internet speeds to all Spokane neighborhoods.

"We don't have complete coverage as we deploy this," Novotney says. He likens it to a jigsaw puzzle, in which "you put in the easiest pieces first."

Where the lines will be extended next year hasn't been determined yet, he says.

The upgrades primarily will benefit residential and small-business customers, Novotney says.

"The technology we're deploying allows the business customers to get different types of networks," he says.

"For a long time we've gone in and done whatever businesses need; we would build a big fat fiber pipe directly to any business," but having more fiber in outlying areas also will make it less expensive and faster for Qwest to provide fiber lines directly to larger businesses so they can add more advanced services and systems, Novotney says.