Northwest Communications: A Case Study

Northwest Communications, originally known as Amery Telephone Company, was founded in 1897 and now serves approximately 10,000 access lines and provides DSL, cable modem, and dial-up internet service to over 3,000 customers in Iowa. Northwest has made several major marketing advances since installing its Metaswitch platforms: it now can sell services with recurring revenue instead of one-time equipment sales, and has found that small business customers really appreciate the mobility features.

In the past, Northwest was limited to selling either an Avaya private branch exchange or a key system to its business customers. That was a "one shot deal," says Mike Jensen, President and General Manager. Centrex was available, but "Centrex has a bad reputation" in his market.

"The old Centrex pricing model was too tough," Jensen says. "Nobody would buy it. You needed a telephone line for every extension, whereas most key systems could do trunk concentration. Centrex doesn't allow trunk concentration. IP gets us around those issues." So now, instead of an economically challenging service or a one-time equipment sale, Northwest can sell an affordable and fully-featured service that provides recurring revenue.