The next Eschelon

As a follow-up to yesterday’s announcement that it would partner with Global Crossing for local and long distance services, today Eschelon Telecom revealed that it had signed a wholesale contract with Qwest Communications for voice and data services.

Valued at $150 million, the five year agreement between the two service providers will give Eschelon the ability to sell additional features and information services that Qwest had not previously offered to competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) including voice messaging and DSL. “Qwest has really made a breakthrough in being very responsive to the needs of CLECs,” said a spokeswoman for Eschelon. “This wasn’t the case when we were dealing with U S West. We’ve noticed a huge difference since the merger.”

Even though Eschelon and Qwest are technically competitors, as the CLEC provides services to small to medium-sized businesses in Qwest’s territory, Eschelon is “very pleased” with the agreement, according to the spokeswoman. “We feel it’s a positive step forward for the whole telecom market,” she said.

Eschelon is an integrated service provider headquartered in Minneapolis. Currently, the company provides services in Minnesota, Arizona, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Nevada.

Yesterday, Eschelon announced that it would work with Global Crossing in order to provide voice and data services to 12 markets across the country. The value of the 10-year agreement is worth $100 million. In turn, Global Crossing invested $5 million in Eschelon in an effort to help expand the service providers voice and data services network build-out.