Competitive local exchange carrier XO Communications this week announced the formation of two business units -- one focused on enterprise services, the other on wholesale business with other carriers.

XO Business Services and XO Carrier Services will each be led by its own president. The creation of lines of business is intended to buttress the company’s focus around specific customer segments and expedite customer response as the telecom industry consolidates, XO says.

The new lines of business structure creates a single point of decision-making for each customer segment, XO says. Each line of business will have its own finance, marketing, product management, sales and service delivery teams, and will develop and implement market, operational and sales strategies for end-to-end voice, data and IP services to its target customers.

XO Business Services will be led by Tom Cady, who previously focused on the development of Nextlink, the broadband wireless subsidiary of XO Holdings, XO Communications’ parent company, until Nextlink's launch. Cady also previously served as chief marketing officer of XO Communications.

XO Carrier Services will be managed by Ernie Ortega, a 20-year telecom veteran who has served as president of carrier sales at XO Communications. Prior to that position, he served as vice president of national accounts for XO Communications, and has held sales management positions with MCI.

Both executives will report to XO’s COO, Wayne Rehberger.

Separately, XO says it has completed its nationwide intercity fiber-optic network upgrade and is carrying customer traffic across all segments.

It also has begun deploying additional capacity upgrades along major routes on the network in response to customer demand. The upgrade enables XO to more than double network capacity and offer a wider range of high-speed data transport services to content providers, enterprises and service providers, the company says.

The new XO long-haul network initially delivers 100Gbps of capacity and sets the stage for a 400Gbps increase between any two cities on the XO intercity network. The increased capacity enables XO to deliver 10Gbps transport services to businesses and wholesale customers.

The XO nationwide intercity network spans 18,000 route miles connecting 75 major metropolitan markets across the United States. XO also owns 9,100 route miles, consisting of more than 1 million fiber miles, of local fiber networks in 37 metropolitan markets across the country.