The new company will be named Qwest and 
headquartered in Denver. The unusual marriage combines 
an upstart long-distance carrier with an offshoot of 
the old AT&T that has supplied local telephone service 
to customers in the West for decades.
...
"Our combination of these two companies is about a 
single word. And that word is "growth,'- ' Nacchio, 
the Qwest chairman and chief executive officer, told a 
news conference that was broadcast from New York. "We 
will compete effectively with the large players of 
this country,' added Nacchio, who ... will serve as 
chairman and CEO of the combined company. 

He will share a new "Office of the Chairman' with 
Trujillo, now the US West chairman and CEO, as well as 
Philip Anschutz, now chairman of the board of Qwest. 
"It's very clear when you think about operating a 
company, you've got to have one person in charge of 
the way the business runs. And that is Joe,' said 
Trujillo, who also will serve as president of the 
company's high-speed local phone and wireless 
businesses. 
...
"One thing this whole episode will do is educate 
people, investors that, yes, it's wonderful to have 
a state-of-the-art, almost science-fiction quality 
network, but you need customers on that,' said Peter
 Treadway, an analyst with Ryan, Beck-Southeast 
Research Group.
...
Under the deal, Qwest will pay $69 for each US West 
share. The price will hold as long as Qwest's stock 
trades in a range of $28.26 to $39.90 a share. If 
Qwest shares plummet and stay low, US West can back 
out.
...
To secure approval from government regula tors, Qwest 
plans to sell off its long-distance business within 
the 14 states in which US West provides local phone 
service. The business accounts for about $150 million 
to $200 million in annual revenues, or less than 1 
percent of the combined revenues of the new Qwest. 
Under the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996, US West 
and the other Baby Bells are barred from offering long-
distance dialing to customers within their territories 
until they have opened their local phone monopolies to 
industry rivals. Nacchio and Trujillo said their deal 
would boost competition in the $100 billion local phone 
business. They plan to enter 25 new markets to offer 
customers local highspeed access to the Internet and 
speedy data transmission. 

The problems US West has in keeping pace with 
growth are structural. The company serves just 14 
percent of the nation's local phone customers, but 
its territory extends over 44 percent of the United 
States, including some of the roughest terrain. Growth 
is equally split between urban and rural areas. US West 
has been selling off hundreds of thousands of rural 
lines to smaller phone companies that can tap federal 
universal service funds unavailable to US West.

Trujillo, who will continue to run the merged company's 
local phone and wireless business, would not comment on 
whether the divestment strategy would accelerate.