Qwest bids $55 billion for US West, Frontier 61
wanderingstar writes "Bell South owns 10% of Qwest, the US' 4th-largest long-distance carrier and owner of a very high capacity backbone. Qwest has bid $55 billion to acquire US West (another Baby Bell) and Frontier. US West, in turn, is planning on acquiring 9.5% of Global Crossing (a competitor of Qwest's with their own $40+ billion bid in for US West) - a stake that would be included in a potential Qwest purchase. Anyone else need a roadmap to figure out the telecom business? " My big concern with these is that we are seeming to run into the same sort of incestous relationships that have plagued certain countries industries. Am I unfounded in my concern?
Re:Goodbye freedom of information (Score:1)
Corporations are getting too big and the government is too small and weak to really do anything about it. Look at the MS trial, what harm is really going to come of MS from it? Not much.
If the internet becomes too expensive for me personally (to use at home), and at work I am behind a restrictive firewall, well I have no choice but to give up on the internet as a useful tool for my own personal gain. Without the internet, I might as well throw out my PC too. Disgust would drive me too it.
Frontier *shudder* (Score:1)
I don't think Frontier is a baby bell. I visited their heart in Rochester because our company installed a product there (that they later returned, battered and broken).
Frontier is known in the MN area as having atrociously bad customer service. Until they closed the office here in the Twin Cities, when you walked in to talk to someone, you were greeted with a row of phones in front of a big pane of bulletproof glass that didn't have any people behind it.
Re:doesn't matter. (Score:1)
Re:Goodbye freedom of information (Score:1)
Everyone is paranoid about Qwest becoming the next AT&T when there are a lot of other companies doing similar things, quietly. Yes, there will be a lot of really huge companies running the telco show for a while, but they ALWAYS get smacked around by a small company in the next economic upheval. (WorldCom is the seminal example of the 90s. MCI is the seminal example of the 70s and 80s.) It's the nature of corporate and competitive evolution. And if the big U.S. companies get lazy, faster foreign companies will come in and compete with them (U.S. automobile market, late 1970s).
Here are just SOME of the waiting-in-the-wings competitors:
Level3, whom I think will probably merge with Sprint in a blockbuster move. They're doing a Qwest "if you build the fiber, they will come" strategy, but they're not selling traditional circuits or cloud services. They're going to be wholesaling IP, that's it.
PSINet, who is just ACHING for a telco merger partner to get some respect with (like UUNet did with MFS and WorldCom). They've got the network and the know how even if they are perceived as a third-choice vendor.
Euro-powers: Telekom (Germany) will make a bid for France Telecom's share of Global One soon, which will put that company in the drivers seat of G1. G1 has a lot of clients in the US. Meanwhile BT has been cut out of the US market by its alliance with AT&T in a move incredibly reminiscent of (forgive me) the Hitler-Stalin pact.
Asian-powers: NTT, KDD and others are also eyeing the US market.
The key is opening up the local loop, which is happening in spite of the baby bells in many places. I, for one, get my phone service from my cable TV provider here, and it's NOT AT&T. Cell phones are becoming so ubiquitous that many people are using them as their primary phone.
The mergers we're seeing are a manifestation of the dynamism of the industry, not necessarily a competitive threat. LET Qwest by USWest's problems, and either reform 'em or fail. Either way, the end consumer wins.
That's just how I see it.
Phil versus Sol (Score:1)
Solomon (Sol) Trujillo (US West) can't seem to keep his company running, much less make any progress. US West is a joke among their customers and other telecom people. But they have valuable assets and customer base.
Don't get me wrong, the time period immediately following a merger of the two wouldn't necessarily be pretty -- Phil's known for brutal management when necessary, but I bet the combined company would come out of the gate kicking butt.
Everyone I know who works for USWest has told me that no-one understood the merits of the Global Crossing deal, but everyone feels Qwest could work wonders.
Oh please. (Score:1)
1. As any AT&T data customer can tell you, their customer service is abysmal. Lies go down, tickets are opened, vice presidents are written, no explanation ever comes.
2. AT&T is quite happy to demand access to other people's cable pants, but they bitch and moan and throw a fit when people want access to theirs. Fair is fair.
3. TCIs customer service is even worse than AT&Ts.
4. Forcing people to provide access to their infrastructure at competitive rates can work rather well for the consumer. If we had to rely on USwest for DSL in seattle we would be getting nowhere fast. Fortunatly, Covad can rent copper from USwest and hook it to their own network. The result: When US west was promising 3 month install times, covad was doing in three weeks. USwest is feeling the competition too. Their install times have dropped and they just cut their prices by $20. This from a company who has been trying to jack up the price on ISDN for years.
Re:More Bandwidth Than God (Score:1)
Why would ANYONE want to buy US West's problems? (Score:1)
US West has a bad habit of abusing its employees, as well as its customers. Recently, for instance, they were going to refuse an overdue promotion for one of their line people in our area because he was going to be retiring soon. He's one of those rare people that you would hire in a heartbeat. Other line employees threatened to walk off the job in protest. They all received notices warning them that they would lose their jobs, but the situation was defused by giving the guy his promotion.
I will be moving about three miles in August. I already have my order in for the phone lines to be moved, and I asked to keep my present numbers, since the area is within the same exchange. My experience with this company leaves me wondering if I've provided sufficient advance notice for them to get things right without turning off the phones here later on THIS week instead of the middle of August!
This is a company that's worth buying? I don't think so!
Hooray! (Score:1)
I can hardly express how happy I will be if Qwest does indeed buy USWest. If you have to ask why, then you must not be a USWest customer. Their service is abysmal. Analog connections above 33.6Kbps are IMPOSSIBLE in Metro Denver because of the shitty condition of USWest's lines, which they would never even think of upgrading. Their DSL service is wildly overpriced, at $50/month (including line and ISP) for 256Kbps. Some Canadians I talk to on IRC have the nerve to COMPLAIN about paying $55can/month for 1.5Mbps!!!
I can only guess that USWest's monopoly in these parts has taught them to be lazy. When I heard that AT&T/TCI would be laying a new framework in order to deliver phone/TV/Internet, I was overjoyed! But then the Denver City Council took a page out of Portland, Oregon's book and decided to delay the construction so they could force AT&T/TCI to share out their lines. What BS! They lay the lines, they get to do what they want with them. Unfortunately, as you probably know, Oregon won their little dispute, and now it's doubtful whether AT&T/TCI will continue their project there AT ALL. The same is likely to happen here. But now with the prospect of a Qwest buyout of USWest, there is new hope in Denver of inexpensive, reliable, and generally high-quality phone service and broadband internet access!!!
MoNsTeR
Warning: Offtopic but funny alert [was Re:T2 ....] (Score:1)
Re:More Bandwidth Than God (Score:1)
But it's gonna be an odd lot, I can't afford to blow 3500 dollars on one basket.
Re:Dood, where have you been. (Score:1)
3. I didn't think that Qwest actually bought the rail lines outright, I thought they just acquired rights of way from the railroads. Isn't it interesting that the governments big give away to the railroads is being used to shrink time and space further.
Good point about MCI, never the less, they wouldn't be where they are today without goading the government into going after MaBell with the sharp knives.
I thought Rochester was a scrap from AT&T.
Clearly though, telcom is totally inbred and has been for a long time.
Re:Hooray! (Score:1)
Hey if you ever are not getting anywhere with one of their reps, just ask them how to go about filing a formal complaint. They will then REALLY try to fix your problem.
TCI@Home is coming to my area here in Iowa at a snails pace. If you ask me, they are all bad.
Re:More Bandwidth Than God (Score:1)
Re:Hooray! (Score:1)
Significance... (Score:1)
They've been operating as a lean, mean machine for several years, and have quietly taken hold of some of the largest sites on the Internet today. Do we really want Qwest, the granddaddy of "last-mile" services taking over the lowest level content distribution market???
MS buys up cable (Score:1)
> our forms of media disribution, everything we
> read, hear, and see will be at the behest of
> our corporate masters. Microsoft and AOL are
> tugging it out in the high speed access/cable
> tv arena.
Oh yes. Especially in the UK. MS are currently taking stakes in a large proportion of our cable operators (anyone know what that proportion is?). We thought having BT as a monopoly wasn't a good thing, but I'm sure we haven't seen anything yet....
Re:More Bandwidth Than God (Score:1)
yeah tell me about it... my dads company just purchased 23 t3's from philly to new york city... and theres a shitload more where those came from...
No kidding... (Score:1)
Of course it may not be a problem much longer. Things have gotten so bad that the city is trying to kick them out, or at least force them to try to harder. I'm helping with the research (evil grin).
(Of course, I'm in communications hell. Falcon Cable, home of the $29 basic cable service (up $8 since the FCC ruling was appealed). Oh, and enough line noise that I can barely top 26k on my 56k modem--thank you GTE...)
Re:You're not wrong to be concerned... (Score:1)
Re:More Bandwidth Than God (Score:1)
yeah tell me about it... my dad and his company just purchased 23 t3's from philly to new york city... and theres a shitload more where those came from...
T'ain't gonna happen (Score:1)
Who know? The Shadow Knows!!
Re:Hooray! (Score:1)
We just got (well, they are pulling the bridge taps off our loop) 1.1MB SDSL from Covad for US$349 a month including router and a
Dave
Re:Hooray! (Score:1)
After 8 months, I got a single $1000 plus bill, for the previous 8 months. When contacted, USWest offered to waive the install and first month, only. The State took care of it and I ended up with a credit.
Anyone that says having USWest is good, hasn't used them.
Dave
Re:Hooray! (Score:2)
If it works at all.
I know a ton of people who would gladly pay $350 a month or more for a 256k circuit, but the only option is frame-relay at $100 more than that for a 56k.
T2 .... (Score:2)
frozen and broken into a thousand pieces
everyone breathes a sigh of relief
can get on with their lives
together
Hmm (Score:2)
At any rate, in a purely financial sense, is it worth putting some money into Qwest at this point?
Qwest Stock (Score:1)
Reaggultination of Baby Bells, and the data market (Score:1)
However, more and more people in the data/IP industry are convinced that relatively soon, data will be regarded as a mere commodity; it won't matter who you buy from, unless you've got stupendous amounts of capacity. IP will effectively become another utility.
One of the main reasons why buying out Frontier is so attractive is that Frontier participated in the last Qwest fibre buildout, and now Frontier has excess fibre capacity; Global Crossings, on the other hand, is laying tons of trans-oceanic fibre (and its only real competitor right now is the CW unit.) Lots o' trans-ocean and lots o' trans-US fibre complement each other nicely... and trans-{Atlantic, Pacific} capacity is still sufficiently rare that it won't be considered a mere commodity in the near term.
You're not wrong to be concerned... (Score:1)
Interesting to note that by gobbling up US-Worst, this could make Qwest the ILEC in the Denver area, aka the stomping grounds of Level3. Makes me glad I didn't take that job with L3... :-)
--j
More Bandwidth Than God (Score:2)
On the other hand, US West... well, Quest can't hurt, that's for sure!
Qwest's success depends upon 'last mile' (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
> At any rate, in a purely financial sense, is it worth putting some money into Qwest at this point?
It looks like Qwest is planning something big here (I'd hope so since they're ready to shell out $55B), so I'd be willing to bet their stock will jump up pretty soon. With all the fiber they've been putting in the ground I'd keep my eye on Qwest in the hope that we'll all be getting some nice high-speed access soon!
Re:Not a problem... yet. (Score:1)
(in addition, the data unit of Frontier [GlobalCenter, neé ISI/PrimeNet] only has a couple hundred employees, yet is forecasted to provide a very very large chunk of Frontier's profits.)
this rates a 3???!!! (Score:1)
Not a problem... yet. (Score:1)
My guess is that you'll continue to see consolidation along the way, and we'll end up with a handful (3-5) of companies which will compete fiercely with each other.
The thing I think is the most bizarre about this is the sheer difference in size. According to the WSJ, Global Crossing has 148 employees -- they're a *START-UP* company that's trying to buy US West (~54,500 employees) and Frontier ( ~8100 employees).
Dood, where have you been. (Score:4)
A fragmented background on many of the players.
1st. Bell Atlantic and USwest are made of peices carved from old MaBell. Other peices include present day AT&T.
2nd. MaBell was formed by balling up all sorts of small regional telcos in the earlier part of this century.
3rd. Qwest was started by a former AT&T guy and a former railroad guy (he knew how to get rights of way for all that fiber!)
Elsewhere we have MCI/Worldcom which was formed from MCI and worldcom. MCI was at the vanguard of the charge to break up MaBell in the first place. Worldcom was made from MFS, Wiltel and UUnet, among others (I think). As part of the MCI merger, MCIs IP backbone was sold to Cable & Wireless who themselves strung the first transatlantic cable.
Wiltel's fibernetwork was built by Williams in Williams old Natural gass piplines. Williams sold of the network, signed a noncompete, used that time to build capital and now that the noncompete has lapsed, they are building a new network.
Back to MFS. After selling out, some MFS founders decided to build Level3 communications which is currently leasing fiber from Frontier/globalcenter while they build their own network.
Frontier, I believe, is formed from an old baby bell.
I may have some of this wrong, but not so wrong that it makes the whole post wrong. Point is, telecom is heavily inbred. Brothers, mothers, sisters, cousins, all interbreding.
Telecom customer roundup (Score:1)
This seems kind of odd to me, but I guess it's considered normal by phone company executives who have never done it any other way. It's an unfortunate by-product of a process where backbone capacities have improved quickly, but local loop (frontbone?) capacities are lagging - the companies have to get their goods to market, but can only do so by buying into slow-growth, highly regulated local monopolies.
It would be great if some of the independent ADSL providers could get into the local market. My take on the Qwest and Global Crossing efforts is that the leaders of these companies think the independents will be squeezed out by the local telco monopolies. They're probably right, as most people probably have no idea that their phone lines could be piggybacked with another vendor's ADSL, and hooked to an ISP and backbone feed separate from the phone company.
Re:Dood, where have you been. (Score:1)
Re:More Bandwidth Than God (Score:1)
Re:Dood, where have you been. (Score:1)
2. That was the eighties, my good man. Less than twenty years ago. (earlier part of this century?)
3. Buyer of Union Pacific. Railroad lines mean preestablished right of way.
MCI stands for 'Microwave Communication, Inc.'; they got their start doing point-to-point CB-like service, I believe, and then branched out into long distance.
Nobody seems to know how or why Worldcom got to where it is now.
L3 is currently doing OK, since nobody likes MFS and Worldcom much any more. (This also explains why UUNET turned into a bunch of bastards after Worldcom bought 'em... originally they were the only commercial inet presence, the only place where you didn't have to know the secret ARPA/NFS handshake to get a net connection, nor had to deal with the NFS AUP.)
Frontier is the former Rochester Telephone Company. Ain't a Baby Bell. (The data portions of Frontier were only bought like last year, too.)
Will we get better service? Less Spam? (Score:1)
They don't say US WORST for nothing.
---
Spammed? Click here [sputum.com] for free slack on how to fight it!
Re:Qwest's success depends upon 'last mile' (Score:1)
Re:Will we get better service? Less Spam? (Score:1)
US WORST. It's bitter here.
Re:More Bandwidth Than God (Score:1)
Goodbye freedom of information (Score:1)
Sigh, I've been watching this happen for years as have the rest of you. Pretty soon a handful of companies will own all our forms of media disribution, everything we read, hear, and see will be at the behest of our corporate masters. Microsoft and AOL are tugging it out in the high speed access/cable tv arena. Now companies are merging in the telephone industry again. Remember AT&T? We're going to end up with entire portiton of the internet owned by one or two companies (yes I realize that now many backbones are operating by a handful of companies but that number is going to get much smaller) and all of our broadcast television is going to end up whatever Microsoft or AOL wishes us to see. All of our content will be provided by Fox and radi owill remain in the hands of CBS, NBC, and ABC. Everything will be censored according to the particular company's user policy. Big corporations win, we lose. Without the ability to choose between one provider and anaother we'll end up with the kind of treatment AT&T provided before being broken up. You have to have one of their techs install a new phone (or cable box or any other medium of data exchange), if you have a problem with the service...oh well. You're no longer a person, just a marketing statistic, you always have been and for the forseeable future always will be.
I want you to get up, get up right now and go to the window. I want you to stick your head out the window and yell at the top of your lungs, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Support your local destablizing element.
Re: that's a fine question. (Score:1)
US Worst seems to be a fairly apt moniker in my estimation.
Re:Dood, where have you been. (Score:1)
To nitpick, the MCI in MCI Worldcom no longer stands for anything, much like AT&T doesn't stand for anyhting anymore....
Actually everyone owes MCI a great deal of gratitude for suing AT&T many times during the late 60s and 70's which eventually led up to the decision to break up the AT&T telecom monopoly. Can you imagine the state of US telecom if the market consisted of just AT&T, GTE and the few very small local operations that never were bought up by AT&T?
Re:Hooray! (Score:1)
Maybe some suggestions?
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"