Qwest, CenturyLink Merge, Create Even Bigger Marginally-Relevant USF Money Pit
from the bigger-does-not-mean-better dept
Qwest was founded in 1996 by Philip Anschutz, who at the time owned the Southern Pacific Railroad and used the opportunity to deploy fiber lines along railroad tracks. It seems like only yesterday that Qwest paid $45 billion to acquire US West in 2000, one of seven baby bells created by the antitrust breakup of AT&T in 1983. Since then, Qwest has stumbled through accounting scandals and watched its stock plummet as the carrier struggled with traditional voice defections without a wireless division to buoy revenues. Meanwhile, it almost was yesterday that CenturyTel merged with Embarq to create "CenturyLink." This morning Qwest and CenturyLink announced they in turn would be merging in a deal worth $22.4 billion (including $11.8 billion in Qwest debt).
At first glimpse it's not entirely clear what the point of the merger is, unless the two companies were simply interested in losing landline and last-generation DSL customers to cable competitors even faster. Neither company has exactly been lighting it up on the network upgrade front -- and Qwest has spent most of the last few years trying to trim debt for an acquisition instead of investing back into the network. The result is a company with aging last-mile infrastructure who (in the markets where it actually sees competition) pits slower DSL against faster alternatives like cable DOCSIS 3.0 technology or community fiber (which they have spent millions suing and fighting in Utah and Washington State).
Creating a larger company doesn't magically spawn a wireless division, and the company is still going to need substantially more cash to upgrade all of that outdated copper if they want to stay relevant. They may be thinking that by merging they can create a "too big to fail" super-rural telco with a better shot of getting USF and stimulus funds. As we've long noted, the USF is a very, very broken program that funnels money to carriers with historically little to no oversight into how that money is spent (and $25 billion has been dumped into e-Rate alone since 1998). Qwest recently applied for $350 million in federal stimulus funds, and lobbyists have been pushing the FCC to expand the USF to cover residential broadband and give more of that money to bigger carriers.
So the result will be a new, massive phone company primarily serving uncompetitive, rural markets using outdated last mile connections, with consumers helped through this transition via a support infrastructure that just grew incredibly fast. All of this will be propped up by the historically-broken (but soon to be supposedly "reformed") USF system and taxpayer subsidy, guided by Qwest lobbyists and an FCC with no real interest in improving competition in the sector. Surely this will turn out well for everybody involved, right?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Well, as a Qworst customer in central Denver
My 1970 (or earlier) phone lines will stay the same and I will still not be able to order more than 3Mbps (down) from CenturyLink.
And, for many charities in Denver, they are screwed with HQ moving to Monroe, LA.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Well, as a Qworst customer in central Denver
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eclectic.... decisions...?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Oh, I mean, Ah TAM, 24/7 hypocrite.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Complacency at it's best.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Complacency at it's best.
Not really. The two companies serve entirely different regions.
It is really just about consolidation of operations in a bid to achieve some cost-cutting. Aside from the state of the two companies, and their future prospects as stated by Karl, the question should be, is it a good deal, or not?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Complacency at it's best.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Get some facts straight..,
Qwest has the largest internet fiber backbone in the United States, and the 2nd largest internet backbone in the World. Provides fiber connections to 95% of all the Fortune 500 companies. And is one of only 3 backbone service providers for the U.S. Government. It's not the small fry company you make it out to be.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
With residential service the "contract" is mainly "you pay us what we want, don't do what we dislike, and we'll try to get you service. When we feel like it. Unless we don't. We reserve the right to change this any way we want at any time." Since usually individual residents are either too poor for lawyers, don't have a set metric to complain about, are not able to act as a group, or have a range of choices about their broadband services, all they can do is take it and hope. So yah these changes would be more interesting.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
That really doesn't change the wireless or residential equation, or my other points about the merger being about creating a company that's too big to fail and propped up with taxpayer funds.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Oh, it's worse than that...
I don't have a lot of links, as this is all from personal experience, but they violated Utah law regarding DSL service, specifically engaging in false service outages directed at a medium-size ISP/internet wholesaler I worked for. They further endeared themselves to me by unilaterally switching me from my FREE, work-provided DSL service (maintained and supported by friends and co-workers) to their overpriced shite service.
When my phone bill arrived, with congratulations on my new service, I called, screamed at some poor support guy, made damn clear that I did not want their service, had never ordered their service and, given the circumstances, would have no conceivable reason to order their service.
Month later, came back from a weekend in the mountains to find the service had been switched. Called, screamed, act2, spoke to a supervisor who was so beat down she didn't even offer terms, just accepted my cancellation of land line, DSL, everything related to Qwest. As if it happened a lot.
Oh, and when she checked the notes on my first cancellation call, she claimed all they said was "Explained new service to caller." Nice. That's not ineptitude of support, that's instructing your support personnel to participate in a fucking policy of fraud. No wonder he sounded a little weird.
There's a lot more, SLAMming, SLAPPing, dirty lobbying, pretty much the whole role call of bad corporate practice.
Good luck, anybody involved in any way with these fucks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
But a month after Anschutz bought USWest . . .
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Be fair
[ link to this | view in chronology ]