CenturyLink Network Operations Center Becomes One of First in North America with TL 9000 Certification

MONROE, La., July 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) today announced that its Network Event Management Center (NEMC) has earned TL 9000 certification under the product categories 7.3.2 Network Operations Center (NOC) and 7.9 General Support Services (GSS), becoming one of the first major carriers in North America and only one of six companies in the world to receive a TL 9000 NOC certification.

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The specific areas of certification include network event management, change management, root cause analysis and reason for outage.

The TL 9000 quality management system was developed by the Quality of Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications (QuEST) Forum, a global communications association comprised of the world's top industry service providers and suppliers dedicated to continually improving standards in the telecommunications industry. TL 9000 was built on ISO 9001 standards, designed to help organizations ensure they meet the needs of customers, and defines the unique communications quality system requirements for design, development, production, delivery, and service in pursuit of best in class in their respective product categories.

As part of the certification, CenturyLink's Network Event Management Center (NEMC) was audited by National Quality Assurance (NQA) and recognized for its quality management initiatives and continuous improvements, including 24/7 support services from its Network Change Management organization. The NEMC provides network outage support, network event reporting to employees and government agencies, change management, planned maintenance customer notifications, reason for outage reports, and crisis management support.

"Receiving the TL 9000 certification is an exceptional achievement for CenturyLink and shows our commitment to exceeding customer expectations through continual service improvements," said Amador Lucero, vice president, CenturyLink Network Operations Center. "Our customers can be confident that the CenturyLink NEMC has a comprehensive quality plan in place that drives process improvements for years to come."

In order to maintain the TL 9000 certification, the CenturyLink NEMC will undergo frequent audits to ensure there is continual quality improvement. 

About CenturyLink
CenturyLink is the third largest telecommunications company in the United States. The company provides broadband, voice, wireless and managed services to consumers and businesses across the country. It also offers advanced entertainment services under the CenturyLink™ Prism™ TV and DIRECTV brands. In addition, the company provides data, voice and managed services to enterprise, government and wholesale customers in local, national and select international markets through its high-quality advanced fiber optic network and multiple data centers. CenturyLink is recognized as a leader in the network services market by key technology industry analyst firms, and is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises through Savvis, a CenturyLink company. CenturyLink's customers range from Fortune 500 companies in some of the country's largest cities to families living in rural America. Headquartered in Monroe, La., CenturyLink is an S&P 500 company and is included among the Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporations. For more information, visit www.centurylink.com.

SOURCE CenturyLink, Inc.