Openly repudiating the policies of US West Inc., the company it bought, Qwest Communications International Inc. this week dropped 17 lawsuits against telecom regulators and said it would welcome local competitors with open arms.
Qwest's moves are aimed at preparing itself for a series of state-by-state long-distance applications it plans to start making to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission next year. The FCC requires that Bell companies - including Qwest, now that it has bought US West - to completely open its local markets to competitors before granting long-distance rights.
Qwest needs the long-distance authority more urgently than the other Bells. US West never won, or even applied for, any FCC long-distance licenses. As a result, the FCC forced Qwest to spin off all its own long-distance voice and data operations in the 14 US West states to emerging carrier Touch America before closing the merger.
That means former Qwest national enterprise customers for services like frame relay and IP VPNs now must deal with two carriers instead of one. And Qwest can't solicit pure national contracts until it wins the long-distance authority for most or all of the western states.
Some of the measures laid out this week by Qwest senior vice president Steve Davis are ones US West might have had to take eventually anyway. For example, Davis said Qwest was "voluntarily" offering a Performance Assurance Plan tracking nearly 600 measures of the wholesale service it provides to competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC). But such a plan has become expected after the New York Public Service Commission made Verizon provide such guarantees before endorsing its long-distance bid there.
Still, other Qwest moves represent a sea change from the US West days. Qwest said it would allow different CLECs to interconnect within a Qwest central office rather than find a separate space to do so. Qwest also guaranteed to provide CLEC collocation space in Qwest central offices within 90 days "provided that sufficient space is available."
Davis even claimed that Qwest would provide incentives to wholesale reps to stimulate sales of network elements to CLECs.
The first state long-distance application is not expected till next spring, but Davis made clear he wouldn't defend US West's past practices, which had earned it the sobriquet "US Worst" from some competitors and users. "Whatever position they took in the past is irrelevant," Davis said.