Who We Are
More than just a VOIP and Colocation provider.
We believe you can only do well one thing at a time. From that, it naturally makes good sense to always do the next right thing. It’s a very simple philosophy, and it could easily be overlooked. Yet you hear it when we answer your call on the first or second ring, every time. We sound like we’re down the street, because we practically are — in our offices in Portland, Oregon.
You notice it when your service is changed or your issue is resolved with one phone call. (In fact, we’re likely to call you to say we fixed something before you were even aware of it.) It’s not a big deal. We just like to get things done right the first time.
We’ve been doing the next right thing since 1997. At the time, founder Tom Gillihan was managing a Northwest tech lab’s IT department and found to his dismay that 50% of their Internet traffic went to surfing porn and other inappropriate sites. Not only did this open the company up to possible legal troubles, but the sheer volume was clogging their Internet connection, leaving those with legitimate business to deal with slow, inconsistent Internet speeds.
Tom resolved to do something about that and lit upon the idea of starting a company that provides clean, filtered Internet access to businesses. Thus, our company, Sterling Communications was born.
Those were the Wild West days of the Internet. Portland alone boasted some 83 local ISPs. Since then, most of those companies have been acquired or gone out of business. We’ve managed to stick around by adhering to two simple principles:
- Create ways to make the Internet more productive for people.
- Take the best possible care of our customers.
Later joined by VP of Engineering, Bill Anderson, we’ve been able to make good on those two promises. And it’s paid off. Each year since 2001, we’ve been recognized by the Portland Business Journal as being among the Top 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies.
The way we’ve grown literally speaks a lot for how we work: it’s been mostly word-of-mouth.
Today we have the infrastructure and bandwidth to support the biggest corporations and smallest businesses, offering VoIP Phone Systems, high speed Internet Access, Portland Business Web Hosting, advanced Colocation Facilities, Internet Faxing services and other Web-based products.
