US West
| U S West logo, 1984-2000 | |
| Company type | Defunct |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1984 |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado, USA |
| Website | www.qwest.com |
US West, Inc. was a Regional Bell Operating Company, one of seven "Baby Bells" that were spawned by the antitrust breakup of AT&T in 1983. It provided telephone and data service to several Pacific Northwest and mountain states. It was acquired by Qwest Communications International on June 30, 2000 in what some economists have charged as a hostile takeover. Prior to the publicly announced "merger," US West was traded publicly under ticker symbol "USW." The company headquarters was located at 1801 California Street in Denver, Colorado, the present-day company headquarters of Qwest.
Until 1990, US West Communications Group was a holding company with three subsidiary Regional Bell operators: Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph (or Mountain Bell; based in Denver, Colorado), Northwestern Bell (based in Omaha, Nebraska) and Pacific Northwest Bell (based in Seattle, Washington). On January 1, 1991, US West consolidated these three companies as one, called US West Communications, Inc., becoming the first Baby Bell to consolidate operations of its Bell Operating Companies (BellSouth with its BellSouth Telecommunications subsidiary being the other).
US West served most parts of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming (formerly Mountain Bell area); Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota (formerly Northwestern Bell area); and Idaho, Oregon and Washington (formerly Pacific Northwest Bell area).
US West's accomplishments
US West Communications became a pioneer in the introduction and rapid system-wide implementation of telephone technologies designed by Bellcore in the 1980s and 1990s. Their lead in this push became one that many other Regional Bell Operating Companies had to scramble to keep up with. Much of US West's success in this endeavor was for multiple reasons; including their then-innovative use of "test-markets" for staggered roll-outs of new calling features in middle-sized cities such as Boise, Idaho; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Phoenix, Arizona before releasing them on a wider scale. (They were the first communications provider to use this strategy now called beta-testing). Their geographic presence featured telephone switching equipment that had been constructed fairly recent to the time frame, thereby requiring fewer upgrades. Their service area was also experiencing population growth at a tremendous rate, tripling their subscriber-base in a short time and increasing revenues.
US West Communications was the first local telephone company to offer Caller ID service in 1991; nearly four years before any other local telco could do so. They were the first telco to upgrade their PSTN to electronic switching before 1990 and they were the first to offer residential and business ISDN and later, DSL services to their customers by 1997. US West was also briefly in the cable business with its purchase of Continental Cablevision in 1996, creating MediaOne (which was later spun off).
As a result of its rapid "bring-to-market" abilities and continued success in the advances in technology, the company quickly adopted a new slogan— "Life's better here."
Criticisms of US West
Despite the rapid growth and waves of technology, US West began to capture the ire of many customers and even some of the states in which they operated.
US West, in several complaints that landed the company in court, was accused of failing to meet service needs within a reasonable time frame and practicing predatory billing and collection methods. While the company often cited that subscriber demands were oftentimes greater than their abilities to fulfill orders, many critics pointed to their high profit margins, spending on bring-to-market technology and lackluster investment in customer support as evidence to the contrary and accused the company of monopoly-like practices. This is/was a serious charge, as the telecom industry had, only 10 years before, divested the entire Bell System with the hopes of abolishing such phenomena.
The company was fined multiple times by the State of Oregon for these practices during the 1990s. US West was also, at several times, involved in smaller litigation with other states within its service area for similar complaints from customers.
In business-to-business matters, US West also had a rather sullied reputation shortly before its demise. Namely, Qwest, MCI and smaller CLECs who had recently been allowed to offer local service within US West's service area (as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) complained to the FCC that US West was uncooperative in releasing their formerly owned lines to these new companies. These types of complaints landed US West in court yet again and offered the complex question of whether or not the government could legally offer the sale of owned property to other companies in the event of de-regulation.
US West's stalled and problematic cooperation with other CLECs was long claimed by telecom experts at the time to be the "reason" that Qwest "merged" with US West. [citation needed]
The "merger"
Articles in both The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News had been reporting many times during the previous year that many telecom service providers, CLECs, one being Qwest Communications, Inc., had complained to the FCC multiple times about US West's seeming refusal to cooperate in provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Specifically, US West either neglected or seriously delayed to release "bundled loops" and had, through those actions, made it extremely difficult for companies, including Qwest to provide local telephone service to its customers in addition to the long-distance service it had been already providing. Other companies began following suit, and charged US West with monopoly-like or anti-trust type behavior.
Courts were slow to do much about this because at the time, the full "letter of the law" of the 1996 Act had no precedence.
During the Winter of 1999-2000, US West announced publicly that it had received an unsolicited offer by Qwest Communications, Inc, another Denver-based firm to buy US West. At the time, US West had been attempting to merge with Global Crossing, Inc and for months this deal had been stalled through the SEC and was earning both companies a lot of negative press.
US West, at the time, publicly refused this request and even derided this attempt in the local press. However, in March of 2000, it was announced that Qwest, unable to have their unsolicited offers answered duly, had purchased so much US West stock, that they then controlled the Board of Directors. (see hostile takeover)
On June 30, 2000, the company was "merged" by order of the new board.
US West CEO Solomon Trujillo resigned officially. But popular reports and rumours circulated that he had a very caustic relationship with Joseph Nacchio (who had been appointed the new CEO of the new Qwest) and that Mr. Nacchio allegedly had Mr. Trujillo escorted out of the building in a rather unprofessional public spectacle. Trujillo then continued to his current position, CEO of the Australian telecommunications provider Telstra.
After the merger, the combined company was renamed Qwest Communications International, Inc., with the Bell Operating Company being renamed Qwest Corporation.
Qwest has continually sought to be disassociated with US West's poor customer service record and business reputation by advertising and sloganizing their dedication to customer service since 2002. For additional notes on this please see the Qwest article.