Centurylink Executive Summary

Introduction

CenturyLink an integrated communications company and the third largest telecommunications company in the United States, providing network services, cloud infrastructure, and hosted IT solutions for enterprise customers (CenturyLink, Inc., 2013). They provide data, voice and managed services to residential, business, government, and wholesale customers in local, national, and international markets.

CenturyLink is subject to significant regulation by the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates interstate communications, and state utility commissions, which regulate intrastate communications in its local service area. This means that considerable amounts of information regarding CenturyLink’s business practices are confidential.

Jeffery Mielke, Clinton Hawkins, and Edwin Kroening all provided valuable information to help develop a snapshot of the current IT condition as well as an understanding of company issues and goals. All of these interviewees report to the Director of Internal Systems Management within the Operations Support Systems Development facet of CenturyLink’s IT department.

Jeffery Mielke is a Customer Data Technician that works in the IT Network Operations department for CenturyLink providing physical layer management and internal Network System elements. He is experienced with critical systems and the hardware used by the organization to support business activities. Clinton Hawkins is a Senior IT Engineer that works to support DSL and Internet services for CenturyLink. He helps test and develop systems that support DSL and Fiber optic technologies to be used in the field. Additionally, He helps tools develop tools that maintain the reliability and stability of network information that is used throughout the enterprise and provides technical assistance for network systems and applications used for DSL

This application automates record keeping functions associated with repair operations and provides data required for automatic testing of defective circuits. LMOS application initiates, tracks, and analyzes customer trouble reports on POTS (plain old telephone service) type circuits. The LMOS Host is the mainframe portion and provides storage for line record information and repair history.

Loop Qualification is an application used to enable the qualification of an Internet subscriber’s circuit, or loop for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services. The application is a web-based tool for creating, modifying, and viewing features and network infrastructure facilities. Loop qualification is the process of calculating what signal strength loss is expected on the line given its physical attributes. Comparing the calculated loss to the allowable loss for the specific loop allows a determination to whether that Internet service will work on a given phone