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Qwest fading away into the future
Forget 'plain old' telephone lines — data is the plan as
Pioneer Press
By Leslie Brooks Suzukamo
Denver-based Qwest Communications International, the state's
largest phone provider, on April 1 will officially be sold to
CenturyLink Inc. of
The combined company will be called CenturyLink, and both
companies have stressed that they expect a smooth transition.
Service will continue as usual and CenturyLink has agreed with
federal and state regulators to make no rate changes for
consumers or small businesses through the end of 2012.
"There should be little to no impact to consumers," agreed
Christopher Larsen, an analyst with Piper Jaffray who follows
both companies.
Job losses usually follow acquisitions such as this, but the
jobs lost will be mostly at Qwest headquarters in
CenturyLink also forged an agreement with the Communications
Workers of America to get regulatory approval, but Qwest already
is pretty lean, and the union doesn't expect major cuts that
could hurt service in the field, said Al Kogler, CWA spokesman.
The union has 13,705 Qwest workers, including 2,009 in
What changes will occur will be more subtle. CenturyLink is
emphasizing that it no longer is just about connecting a phone
call, which is known
in telecommunications as "POTS," or "Plain Old Telephone
Service."
CenturyLink has pledged to expand its high-speed Internet
offerings in underserved rural areas, and analysts believe it
also may bring Internet-based TV service to the Twin Cities in
the near future to compete with cable operators like Comcast.
"To look at us as a traditional telephone company — that's not
who we are. Broadband is our future," said Duane Ring,
CenturyLink's new regional president, who is moving from La
Crosse, Wis., to Qwest's downtown Minneapolis offices next week.
Qwest and CenturyLink serve a combined 1.4 million voice calling
lines in Minnesota, with 1.3 million of those lines belonging to
Qwest alone. Old fashioned telephone calling is still its core
business, but that's drying up as people drop traditional home
phone lines for cellphones or alternatives from cable and
broadband calling services.
Qwest reported it lost 12 percent of consumer and small-business
telephone lines in its 14-state territory in 2009.
For the same period, CenturyLink said it lost 7.6 percent of its
lines in 33 states.
Both companies are gaining broadband customers, but at a much
slower rate. Historically, both CenturyLink and Qwest have
delivered mainly voice services for much of their lives because
of the high cost of laying broadband across sparsely populated
territories.
Now the companies realize there is no future but in high-speed
Internet. In
Critics noted that Qwest spent more than that on broadband
deployment in
Within seven years, CenturyLink must make ultra-fast broadband
service with download speeds of 12 megabits-per-second or higher
available to twice as many Qwest customers as have that kind of
service today, according to an agreement it made with the
Federal Communications Commission for regulatory approval last
week.
That should speed up the deployment of fiber-optic broadband
that is capable of carrying TV into the home, said Donna
Jaegers, an analyst with D.A. Davidson & Co. in
"Qwest has been doing fiber-to-the-neighborhood but they've been
rolling it out slowly," Jaegers said. She believes CenturyLink
will introduce its Internet TV service, called Prism, to the
Twin Cities in the near future to compete with cable TV.
CenturyLink so far has deployed Prism to only five markets,
though one of them is LaCrosse, Wis. It has plans to add three
more this year.
Larger rivals ATT and Verizon Communication have Internet TV
services more widely launched in their territories. Qwest
dropped similar plans years ago.
"I think there's room for a company like Qwest but not on voice
services," Jaegers said. "It's high-speed data."
Leslie Brooks Suzukamo can be reached at 651-228-5475.
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