Big Monroe, La.-based communications company CenturyLink Inc. announced last month that it was beginning to offer faster broadband speeds to business customers in multitenant office buildings here and in other cities throughout the state. 

Kerry Zimmer, Spokane-based marketing and public relations manager for CenturyLink, says the company now provides the service to more than 800 business customers in 80 buildings here. 

The company says its business customers now have access to gigabyte service with faster download speeds, as well as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), cloud-based services, and managed IT services. 

“The one-gigabyte service is the fastest available speed right now,” she says. “Additionally, a fiber connection is what we call future proof, so as demand for speed increases, we’re able to increase our service speed along with it.” 

Zimmer says that the new fiber-enabled broadband connection is better quality. 

“We’ve gotten some good feedback so far. It’s amazing to see how excited customers are, going from a less-than-consistent connection to a direct, symmetrical, gig-fast one,” she says.

Zimmer says so far, statewide, the company has enabled over 2,000 buildings in 74 cities to access the increased speed. 

“We recently announced similar offerings in Walla Walla, and should have more such announcements coming in the spring,” she says. “Becoming a 1 gig city is a great step for Spokane.”  

CenturyLink is a global communications, hosting, cloud, and IT services company that operates more than 55 data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia. The company provides broadband, voice, video, data, and managed services over a 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network, and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network.