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Technology Stocks : Qwest Communications (Q) (formerly QWST) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Techplayer who wrote (4886)	8/12/1999 1:16:00 AM
From: RTev	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6846

US west has fiber but is a dinosaur, even compared to T et al. How so? What part of it makes it a dinosaur? Is it because of its dreadful customer-service record? Is it just because it's an RBOC that (like all the others) has built itself to respond, not to competition, but to regulation? All of those things make it lumbering and will present a challenge as it is combined with Qwest, but there are also other aspects of the company that indicate -- despite its significant and undeniable problems -- that it has something in its DNA that will allow it, under the right circumstances, to give birth to something that might just be souring and graceful like a bird (dinausaur descendents though they may be). First, there's the initial merger agreement with GBLX and then their agreement with QWST. Is this what a dinosaur would do? Why not follow the lead of their siblings and do a comfortable merger with another RBOC? Why not follow the careful lead of BLS and do a CYA equity investment in a new-fangled company like QWST? This marriage is enough to indicate that USW has evolved in a far different direction than its siblings. Anything else? Consider DSL rollout. This is from a ZDNet story: "Incumbent phone companies showed the greatest amount of growth, hitting 131,000 lines in service. U S West claims to hit 50,000 DSL lines on its own." (http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2312598,00.html) Look at that. Among all the ILECs out there, little ol' USWest has managed to install 38% of the DSL lines. Wireless is another issue. All of the RBOCs (except US West and the PacTel portion of SBC) have wide-distribution cellular networks based mostly on the original cell-licence grants to the incumbent carriers. US West, in contrast, has a compact network of PCS licenses that cover only the largest cities in their territory. They sold off their original licenses to Airtouch, but they grabbed up licenses for more advanced technology focused on the cities where the majority of their customers live. I don't know enough about the whole mix of wireless markets, but from the sidelines, that looks like a smart move. One other factor is cable. Like Bell Atlantic, USWest spent millions on an internet-blind vision of wired communities. Not much came of it for either company, but in the process they collected and merged into a whole a group of cable companies that were called a few months ago the most advanced cable plant in the country. After building UMG, they decided it didn't work well with the regulated parts of the company and so divested it to their stockholders. But those stockholders benefited handsomely when AT&T bought it a few months ago. One could interpret this one either way, but the fact that they pulled such an organization together and then spun it off as such a desirable entity suggests to me that US West deserves some credit. Bottom line: US West is a company with severe problems, but also a lean outfit that has shown far more imagination than many of its peers. If the systems problems that so encumber USW can be fixed, then I think this progressive tendencies they've shown in the past will be enhanced when they become QWST.