A Network Upgrade Delivers Incredible Uptime Coast to Coast

In 2020, Rew Materials was hit with a ransomware attack.

“It was some of the hardest five or six days of my career working around the clock trying to get the network back up and running,” says Rew Materials IT Director Todd Thielbar.

“We needed to shut [the network] down, and Lumen stepped up. This was happening at three or four in the morning on a Saturday, but they were able to respond immediately to our request to shut everything down.”

Rew Materials depends on such strong partners to sustain their 40-year legacy in the construction materials industry. Since they deal with thousands of contractors in 23 U.S. states, they need top-notch reliability and connectivity alongside high-quality security and rapid response times.

Rew’s previous providers stood in the way of delivering high-quality customer service. They turned to Lumen to help them meet—and exceed—customer expectations.

Surveying the challenges

Rew Materials IT Director Todd Thielbar remembers how stressful it was to manage previous partnerships.

“With our previous partners, we had a lot of downtime, and we spent hours on the phone trying to convince them to take the problem seriously,” he says.

This created several inefficiencies that pulled the IT team away from more important projects. The rise of remote work made the situation even more complicated.

“The volume of issues, along with the poor vendor response, just confirmed we couldn’t keep going down that path,” Thielbar explains.

Rew Materials also wanted to expand into new markets, but their network couldn’t support how quickly they wanted to move. “When you go to order a data circuit, it can be 90–120 days out,” Thielbar says. “That’s a long time to wait when you’re ready to open a new location, get feet on the ground and get your business going.”

Lumen turned out to be the perfect partner to create, connect and empower their business locations—and take service and support as seriously as they did.

Co-creating an ideal solution stack for Rew Materials

Lumen provides more flexibility and efficiency than its competitors, through cost-effective and feature-rich solutions. Rew Materials adopted several products:

• Lumen® SD‑WAN to connect their 50+ locations
• Lumen® Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) for VPN connectivity
• Lumen® Voice Complete® to provide cloud-ready SIP services

The new tech stack delivered several benefits, including automatic ticketing.

“When there are issues and problems, whatever they might be, Lumen automatically opens a ticket for us,” Thielbar explains. “We don’t have to stop what we’re doing, we don’t have to call anybody.” When there’s an issue, Lumen proactively offers updates.

Lumen technology also allows Rew Materials to better support remote workers. With additional security features, the Rew Materials team serves customers with fewer headaches.

“In order for us to do business, our systems have to be up and running all the time. Being able to work from anywhere, but doing it securely through a gate, was a game changer for us,” Thielbar says.

Rew Materials also improved uptime across the organization by integrating multiple solutions. Thielbar no longer loses sleep over outages or inconsistencies. In 2024, they averaged a 30 millisecond latency with 98.5% uptime.

Better partner relationships lead to better client relationships

Thielbar no longer needs to babysit providers or persuade them of a situation’s urgency.

“I don’t have that kind of stress anymore,” he says. “I know Lumen is watching and working on it, always keeping an eye on our environment so I can focus on other things.””We’re just getting started,” Thielbar says, and there will be many more opportunities for Rew Materials to use Lumen technology to expand their capabilities and interact with customers more efficiently.

To see how other companies transform their networks with Lumen, you can read our additional customer success stories here.

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Current Lumen customer compensated for their endorsement.

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