Qwest Corporation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article refers to the local telephone operating company. For the holding company, see Qwest.
- For the defunct holding company created in 1984 as a Regional Bell Operating Company, see US West.
| Qwest Corporation | |
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| Type | Private (Subsidiary of Qwest) |
| Founded | 1911[1] |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado, USA |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Products | Local Telephone Service |
| Parent | AT&T (1911-1983) U S WEST (1984-2000) Qwest (2000-present) |
| Subsidiaries | Malheur Bell El Paso County Telephone |
| Website | www.qwest.com |
Qwest Corporation is the single Bell Operating Company of Qwest Communications International, Inc. It was formerly named U S WEST Communications, Inc. from 1991 to 2000, and also formerly named The Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company from 1911 to 1991. It includes the former operations of Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell as well.
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[edit] History
[edit] Mountain Bell
[edit] Denver Telephone Dispatch Company
Recent Harvard graduates Frederick O. Vaille, and Henry R. Walcott, went to denver and met a saloonkeeper, Sam Morgan and together secured 161 customer, enough warrant a return to Boston to secure a new telephone franchise from the American Bell Telephone Co.
When the franchise was secured, wires were strung, boys were hired as operators, a switchboard installed and the Denver Telephone Dispatch Company opened for business on February 24, 1879. The Denver exchange was the seventeenth in the nation, opening just nine days after the Minneapolis exchange. Denver's Rocky Mountain News noted this momentous event with the these 11-words, "The Telephone Company are {sic} adding new subscribers to the system every day."
[edit] Building the Colorado Telephone Company
Soon after the Denver Dispatch Company began operations, the Western Union-owned Colorado Edison Telephone Company began competitive operations. Western Union also began a phone company in Leadville, Colorado.
The Edison Company with its powerful transmitter was able to offer service to nearby towns of Golden, Georgetown, Central City, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
The competitive battle raged as the Dispatch Company acquired better transmitters and added Golden, Black Hawk, Georgetown and Central City to its calling area. When the American Bell Company won its patent infringement suit with Western Union, the Bell companies absorbed the Western Union companies. In Denver, legitimate face-to-face competition for local service didn't reappear in until 1997.
In 1880, Vaille sold two of his four franchise contracts back to American Bell, which, in turn, sold them to Horace Tabor in Leadville. In January of 1881, Vaille joined a group of Denver business leaders to form the Colorado Telephone Company. Denver Dispatch faded into history when Vaille sold his remaining two Bell contracts to the Colorado Telephone Company. Henry Wolcott was the president of Colorado Telephone, while Vaille stayed on as general manager for three years.
Meanwhile, the Colorado Telephone Company began to grow, as "boomer linemen" strung wire to ranches and farm towns in the flat lands, and to mines and mining towns in the mountains, and along Colorado's front range. Colorado Telephone purchased the Leadville company in 1888.
[edit] Rocky Mountain Bell
The Denver Dispatch Company was less than two years old when the Rocky Mountain Telephone Company began in Salt Lake City with less than 100 subscribers. With the financial backing of American Bell, The Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company replaced Rocky Mountain in 1883. Rocky Mountain Bell immediately began an aggressive campaign to buy nearly every small telephone company in the region. Thus, Rocky Mountain Bell's operating territory soon covered nearly all of Utah, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
Alas! A combination of overspending, slip-shod management, and covering an extremely large, lightly populated territory combined to put Rocky Mountain Bell in financial trouble.
[edit] Birth of the Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company
These business practices stopped with the birth of the Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company. Vail was well aware of Rocky Mountain Bell's problems and he insisted that Colorado Telephone Company managers take over the majority of management positions in the former Rocky Mountain Bell Company territory. Vail served as a Mountain States director until his death in 1920.
MST&T commonly did business as Mountain Bell, and provided telephone services in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Southern Idaho, Wyoming, and the El Paso, Texas vicinity. Additionally, MST&T acquired controlling interest in the Malheur Home Telephone Company in Oregon, better known as Malheur Bell. MST&T operated Malheur Bell as a wholly-owned independent subsidiary; an arrangement that continues to this day with Qwest.
Prior to 1984, AT&T held 88.6% in Mountain Bell.
Usage of the Mountain Bell name has recently been reactivated by Unical Enterprises, who began producing telephones under the Mountain Bell name in 2006.
The Mountain Bell headquarters was located at 931 14th Street in Denver, Colorado.
[edit] Northwestern Bell
- For more information on this topic, see Northwestern Bell.
Northwestern Bell Telephone Company served the states just north of the Southwestern Bell area, including: Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska.
Northwestern Bell was formerly the Iowa Telephone Company, which changed its name to Northwestern Bell in 1920. It then absorbed the operations of companies such as the Northwestern Telephone Exchange, the Tri-State Telephone Company, Dakota Central Telephone Company, and the Nebraska Telephone Company.
The Northwestern Bell headquarters was located at 1314 (DOTM) Douglas Street in Omaha, Nebraska. It remained incorporated in Iowa, however.
[edit] Pacific Northwest Bell
- For more information on this topic, see Pacific Northwest Bell.
Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company provided telephone services in the states of Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho.
Pacific Northwest Bell was created on July 1, 1961, when the Bell telephone operations in northern Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state were split off from Pacific Telephone & Telegraph. The same was done when the South Central Bell territory was divided from Southern Bell.
Prior to 1984, AT&T held 89.3% in Pacific Northwest Bell.
Pacific Northwest Bell's headquarters are at 1600 7th Avenue (also known as 1600 Bell Plaza), in Seattle, Washington.
[edit] Ownership Change
In 1984, the Bell System was broken into seven Regional Bell Operating Companies. U S WEST, Inc. became a holding company for Mountain Bell, Northwestern Bell, and Pacific Northwest Bell.
[edit] U S WEST Communications
On January 1, 1991, U S WEST merged the operations of Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell into Mountain Bell[2][3]. At this point, the entities Northwestern Bell Telephone Company and Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company ceased to exist, with The Mountain State Telephone & Telegraph Company continuing and changing its name to U S WEST Communications, Inc., taking over former NWBT and PNWBT operations.
U S WEST Communications Group was a business group within US West founded in the mid-90s that included its local telephone operations. It received its own tracking stock, USW. Its non-telephone assets, such as its directory operations and cable television services were housed under U S WEST Media Group, which also recevied a tracking stock, UMG. The latter was spun off as MediaOne, and its directory publishing operations were transferred back to U S WEST Communications Group, which was absorbed into U S WEST, Inc.
U S WEST, since 1984, had been selling telephone equipment under the Northwestern Bell name. In 1992, U S WEST granted Unical Enterprises, which had been producing phones under the "La Phone" brand, the right to become the exclusive licensee to produce telephones under the Northwestern Bell name, which are produced to this day under the BELL Phones by Northwestern Bell Phones brand.
[edit] Acquisition
In 2000, Qwest Communications International acquired U S WEST, Inc. in a hostile takeover. It was a transaction which U S WEST, which was attempting to acquire Global Crossing, initially resisted. Qwest was a much smaller company, in terms of employees and market capitalization, when it obtained control of the Bell operating company. It was able to purchase U S WEST because its stock was trading at very high prices during the dot-com bubble. U S WEST Communications, Inc. was then renamed Qwest Corporation[4].
[edit] Headquarters
Qwest Corporation is headquartered in Denver, Colorado where it was headquartered since it was formerly Mountain Bell. It maintains offices in Seattle and Omaha.
[edit] References
- ^ Colorado Secretary of State
- ^ Articles of Merger, January 1, 1991, Pacific Northwest Bell, Colorado Secretary of State
- ^ Articles of Merger, January 1, 1991, Northwestern Bell, Colorado Secretary of State
- ^ Articles of Amendment to the Articles of Incorporation, July 5, 2000, Colorado Secretary of State
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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