Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Qwest bids $55 billion for US West, Frontier

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-head's-spinning dept.

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?

6 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hooray! by tgd · · Score: 2

    Wildly over priced? A 256k DSK here (if you're lucky enough to live in the few percent of exchanges in CT that have it), it'll cost you at least five or six times that.

    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.

  2. T2 .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Remember the part in T2 when the bad guy (AT&T) has been
    frozen and broken into a thousand pieces .... and
    everyone breathes a sigh of relief ..... they
    can get on with their lives ..... then it gets creepy and the bits melt and start blobbing
    together ..... well that's the stage we're at now ....

  3. Hmm by edgy · · Score: 2

    All I know is that I was about to buy some Qwest stock, and I'm glad I didn't buy it just yet. After that takeover bid, the stock dropped over 10 points today from 45 to about 34!

    At any rate, in a purely financial sense, is it worth putting some money into Qwest at this point?

  4. More Bandwidth Than God by mdwyer · · Score: 2

    I've had dealings with Qwest recently. They haven't even lit HALF of the fiber they have laid, and already they have more bandwidth than any body - perhaps even God.
    On the other hand, US West... well, Quest can't hurt, that's for sure!

  5. Qwest's success depends upon 'last mile' by spun · · Score: 2

    to end user's homes, that is. They have invested a tremendous amount of money creating one of the wrold's largest fiber networks. The question remains, what is going to fill it? Business data? Movies-on-demand (as their new commercial suggests) Scientific data? It seems they are now thinking voice long distance, which seems to indicate they now understand the basic glitch in their plans, which is that huge amounts of data flowing between tens of thousands of points(businesses/universities) isn't going to fill the pipe. That will take moderately large amounts of data flowing between hundreds of millions of points, and that means your average consumer. Unfortunately, the last mile to those average users is still copper wire, low bandwidth. Thus, it makes sense for Qwest to use some of their huge bandwidth for long distance voice service.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  6. Dood, where have you been. by Gumber · · Score: 4

    If this has you worried, I have to wonder where you have been.

    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.