Phones

When the Justice Dept won its antitrust case against AT&T, the company was split into multiple local operating companies. AT&T focused on the long distance market. Now, those companies have recombined to the point where only three remain: Verizon, AT&T, and Qwest. Essentially, the old AT&T has been reformed in three geographic regions. Why is this? Because of the Regulatory Inefficiency Theorem.

He looked at Qwest’s peering points to get an idea of how much P2P traffic is on its networks. And, while he admits that it’s not an exact measurement of the P2P traffic load, he says the fears of network congestion are a little overblown.

this episode is hosted by P(?)NYB(?)Y, droops, and mesa. The main focus of the episode is the rumored buyout of Qwest by Verizon, and where the hosts think the telecom field is going to go from there. There is also a good amount of talk about the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the usual rambling on and on about nothing in particular.

Well it is done. It went a lot smoother than I expected, due to some fairly professional installers who deemed my advice worthy of their time. Thank heaven for that. This post is hitting the site via my brand spanking new 15 megabit UTOPIA fiber to the premises connection. And when they say FTTP they really mean it. The fiber comes right through my kitchen wall and into a CPE that is screwed to the wall. From that thing a piece of CAT5 goes back out through the wall, over the door and window and through the wall again into my computer. The only unfortunate wiring they did was the connection for the phone, which goes all the way from the CPE to the other end of the building and into Qwest’s wiring.

So today was supposed to be the big “Boom” day for the Zip Feed Mill here in Sioux Falls. I was up on the 8th floor of the Qwest building with my Digital Camera and I managed to capture a sequence of frames of the building going “down”. The moral of this story is, use more TNT.

Today is a big day because we’re getting a new phone line installed and we will not have to share anymore! At noon, I ran down to the local coffee shop to meet with a representative from Qwest about getting DSL service. They currently have a central office in place in Tubac and the next step is to set up a remote terminal here in Arivaca. The line is already run, it’s just a matter of getting around to doing the work. The representative thought it might happen soon, but agreed that it could be as long as two years down the road.

But here among the thistles, large providers such as local phone company Qwest Communications International Inc. see little profit potential. So wireless entrepreneur Fred Ziari drew no resistance for his proposed wireless network, enabling him to quickly build the $5 million cloud at his own expense.

So, as you know, I recently upgraded to DSL from Cable. The Actiontec DSL modem provided by Qwest is really cool and provides quite a few features, but the firmware upgrade provided at the company website makes the thing stop responding.

In Denver, Qwest Communications set up a bank of at least 50 phones at a processing center so refugees could call their loved ones. Colorado state Rep. Debbie Stafford said she was trying to arrange long-term shelter for the storm's victims, and also reunite people with their cats and dogs.

Monday, I call them, and they say that I need to call Qwest. I call Qwest. First they tell me to turn my modem off and on. I already did that, numerous times. They then told me that I need to have DSL line filters on all the phones connected inside my house. I told them I already knew that and that they could shove a DSL filter up their ass if they didn’t actually try fixing my problem. Oh wait, I mean their problem. They then say check the phone line. Qwest calls back the next day and says that there’s a problem with the cable somewhere between my house and their office, and that it would be fixed by today. So today I plugged the DSL modem in, and it actually connected to my ISP, but my connection was hella unstable. I called Qwest and was told that only phone line technicians were sent to fix it, and a DSL guy won’t be there for a day or two more. Thanks a bunch, Qwest. If you weren’t the only phone company in my area I would go to your headquarters, headbutting the door open, beat all of you up, and then switch to another company. Maybe I’ll do it anyway. I have a suspicion that it still won’t be working afterwards. I hate Qwest.

Stan woke me up again this morning, but this time it was so I could talk to the totally awesome Qwest tech, who came out and ran his fingers over the wiring to unleash extra decibels of awesome out of the modem. This may or may not solve the rain problem, but it was nice to talk to someone who actually knew what the hell was going on.

3. we ditched our phone service with qwest and at&t in favor of lingo (thanks scott for the recommend!). its a voip service and it works friggin’ great. 20 bones a month for unlimited long distance to us, canada and western europe. can’t beat that with a stick.

So i just got off the phone with the qwest phone company. i scheduled an appointment to have them come over and install my own phone line in the basement as well as 5mbps DSL. FIVE!! that’s faster than cable here ^_^ i’m so excited. for a while the fastest connection i could find to have installed there was 2 mbps cable and it wasn’t guaranteed. so yeah i’m excited! I’m off to eat dinner be back later to blog more.

Sheldon and I had yesterday figured out Thursday night or so we thought. We were looking forward to spending the Friday alone, hoping to spend quality time together on her day’s off before I go back to work. I set aside my painting (which wasn’t easy because I’m excited about it) to spend time with her. Then I wake up, and NO DSL, AGAIN. I mean come on! How many times do we have to go through this with Qwest? I called a local ISP who was working up some quotes for me to install a T1 line as I waited for Qwest to send another tech repairperson to the house. I learned it will cost us $305 for T1 install costs and $550 per month for the service. Not bad, we’re going to go with it. On the Qwest side, our DSL always goes out in the middle of the night on Friday evenings….hm.

We’ve been without DSL service since late Friday and only came back up around 7:00 pm on Tuesday, then lost it again until this morning. I managed to upload Saturday’s blog from FedEx Kinko’s on Saturday. Sheldon and I decided that we’d take a break from the Internet and let Qwest do their thing, hoping they’d have the DSL back up by Sunday morning. The problem started when Qwest experienced an outage Friday night, a second one on Saturday, and then “visibility issues” from Sunday. I don’t know what happened last night, but thank goodness it came back on again.

After going about our day we realized that our phone line wasn’t working. Turns out our Vonage line survied better than the QWest line – We had to call Qwest and only after they ran a test on the line did it magically start working again.

Independent ISPs face a tough fight as the dominant telecom carriers such as BellSouth, Qwest Communications International, SBC Communications and Verizon Communications push for a rewrite of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The Bells want to end federal regulation of their networks, an outcome that ISPs and competitive carriers generally oppose.

Qwest, after losing the battle for MCI is not averse to being taken out itself. “We’re looking at every opportunity as we look at the consolidation that is going on in our industry… And that’s all I’d better say about that,” Qwest chairman and CEO Richard Notebaert said at the Executives’ Club of Chicago. He also said he was frustrated by MCI’s unwillingness to take the Qwest offer seriously. But back to the buyout question. With $10.5 billion in debt, the company is still a high risk proposition for anyone to acquire. The best recourse for them would be to merge with Sprint’s local business, and try and add more heft to its operations by nibbling at smaller players. By doing so, it can make itself attractive enough for a decent offer from either BellSouth or SBC. The good news is that some of Q’s states have the new growth demographics working in their favor.

According to the Wall Street Jrl the government has just made a deal with a former chief financial officer of Qwest Communications International Inc. This individual will plead guilty "to one criminal count of insider trading" and in return there is an agreement to cooperate with the government in their investigation. This is likely to be a significant advancement in the government's investigation as this is the "former chief financial officer" and "is the highest-ranking former Qwest official to be charged...

First, thus far hedge funds have been mainly followers. The high profile cases in which hedge funds have - or likely will - played a major role have mostly been cases in which there was an individual activist around whom the hedge funds rallied: Roy Disney and Stanley Gold at Disney, Icahn at Blockbuster, and, possibly coming down the pike, Kerkorian at GM. The leading recent case in which hedge funds tried to affect boardroom deliberations without a rallying figure was MCI, in which the hedge funds (thus far) failed to sway the MCI board from its...

“Our view is that incentives for us, as an existing broadband provider with the network and resources already in place to operate in Seattle, would be far less expensive and far faster to market than attempting to create a new telecommunications system,” Comcast Senior Vice President Len Rozek wrote. Qwest wrote that it would prefer that the city let the market for broadband develop in an “open and unfettered environment.”

Qwest quietly has begun offering residential voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service in its 14-state service area – with no public announcement – but at prices far higher than most non-telco VoIP providers.

Despite the appearance of finality in the merger war between Qwest Communications and Verizon Communications when Qwest withdrew from the bidding a week ago, the battle might not yet be completely over.

If you are a long-term shareholder (which usually includes employees and board members), a very strong case can be made that Verizon's bid is indeed superior - because the company is clearly in a much better position to leverage the value of MCI - and deliver returns to shareholders - over the long-term. On the other hand if you're a hedge fund or other more short-term investor, you're only really looking at the near-term cash value where Qwest's offer is obviously preferable.

On paper the merger of SBC & AT&T would have spelt doom for Covad. After all AT&T was a big buyer of Covad’s DSL lines and was now part of SBC which itself has a pretty hefty footprint. Instead it is proving to be a big boost for the company. As the new SBC gets all set to compete with new Verizon, it would need DSL/T-1 lines to compete with Verizon in Verizon territory. Covad, which has taken investment dollars from SBC in the past, fits the bill nicely. The San Jose, California based Covad today announced that SBC (and AT&T)...

Having lost the battle for MCI to Verizon, Businessweek says that the future for Qwest might be very cloudy, and it would need a lot of juggling by the its 57-year-old CEO Dick Notebaert to revive the sinking fortunes of the company, which has to clean up its act, and get rid of the $17.3 billion in debt. Options include going after XO Communications and Time Warner Telecom, and become the third option for the business market. “They don’t have any clear exit plans or alternatives,” Timothy Gilbert, a telecom analyst at Principal...

Andy says now that Bain Capital has invested in Vonage, it won’t be too long before they get bought out. I ask the question who will buy them? Mark Evans is backing Sprint as likely suitor. Dan Berninger, now with Tier 1 Research sent me an email suggestion Qwest could also be a likely Vonage buyer. I buy that… Q has been doing some interesting things lately and is willing to do anything to become a serious national player. But given the post money valuation of $1.1 billion for Vonage, it could be too rich for the Colorado bunch. But...

This reporter’s been covering the Qwest-MCI-Verizon saga for months now. It can get pretty complicated, but USA Today has printed an excellent Q&A on the basics:

For two months, Qwest has been in relentless pursuit of MCI, hoping to break up Verizon's own deal to acquire MCI.

Some of the carriers working with Intel to enable a broad ecosystem around WiMAX include: AT&T* (US), Altitude Telecom* (France), BT* (UK), Brasil Telecom* (Brazil), ETB* (Columbia), Iberbanda* (Spain), Millicom* (Argentina), Qwest* (US), Sify* (India), Speakeasy* (US), Telkom* (South Africa), Telmex* (Mexico), TowerStream* (US), UHT* (Ukraine).

"Vonage applauded Qwest for its willingness to put the health and safety of Americans before short-term competitive considerations," Vonage attorney William Wilhelm wrote to the FCC.

In the same letter, Wilhelm implied that SBC hasn’t shown the same eagerness to provide 911 infrastructure access to Vonage that Qwest has.

Just when you thought it was over, well Qwest has come up with another big offer - $30 a share, or a total of $9.75 billion for MCI. That’s a 30% premium to Verizon’s $7.51 billion. I think with this offer. Q has matched the demands of MCI board, leaving them very few options. Q calls this offer its best and final offer. I thought that buying out Carlos Slim’s stake in MCI, Verizon had trumped Qwest at best and bought insurance at worst. MCI shareholders Legg Mason Capital, American Express and Omega Advisors are putting up $800...

So at the end of this bidding war, what is qwest going to be buying? How is bidding war affecting mci’s business currently? Any details on that?

i am not sure how this is affecting their business, but all i can say that qwest is on a very slippery slope right now with this deal. too expensive of a purchase in my opinion.

I think by persisting in the bidding, QWest has pretty clearly signaled that they are worthless on their own. If they don’t win, someone will be buying them up on the cheap in the near future. Maybe Verizon will buy them too, if they win the MCI fight . . .

Voice Over IP (VoIP) cable telephone provider Vonage has negotiated access to Qwest Communications International’s 911 infrastructure. The agreement will enable Vonage customers to use Qwest’s emergency calling network so that 911 calls go directly to emergency dispatchers.

Up to now Vonage has had to route calls to administrative lines at call centers so that they can transfer them to dispatchers. This approach has raised some criticism. Qwest, the smallest of the Bell companies had previously trialled a net-phone 911 service in Rhode Island. Verizon has promised a similar trial for New York City.

Leading Internet service and equipment providers like Qwest, Siemens, AT&T and British Telecom are reportedly planning to join Intel for commercial WiMAX trials later this year.

Financial Times reports that discussions between Qwest Communications International Inc. and MCI Inc. over a possible merger agreement have "advanced significantly" over the past week.

We have Big Media to thank for saving Americans from themselves. Just as the notion of affordable broadband for all was beginning to take hold in towns and cities across the country, the patriots at Verizon, Qwest, Comcast, Bell South and SBC Communications have created legislation that will stop the "red menace" of community internet before it invades our homes.