Qwest Communications International, Inc. (pronounced like "quest", ) (nyse: Q) is a large telecommunications carrier. Qwest provides local service in 14 western U.S. states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

Qwest provides voice, backbone data services, and digital television in some areas. It operates in three segments: Wireline Services, Wireless Services, and Other Services. The Wireline Services segment provides local voice, long distance voice, and data and Internet (DSL) services to consumers, businesses, and wholesale customers, as well as access services to wholesale customers. The Wireless Services segment, through an agreement with a subsidiary of The Sprint Nextel Corporation, resells Sprint wireless services, including access to Sprint's nationwide personal communications service wireless network, to consumer and business customers primarily within its local service area. Qwest also partners with DirecTV to provide digital television service to its customers. In Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Omaha, Qwest offers Qwest Choice TV. The Other Services segment primarily involves the sublease of real estate assets, such as space in office buildings, warehouses, and other properties.

Qwest Communications also provides long-distance services and broadband data, as well as voice and video communications globally. The company sells its products and services to small businesses, governmental entities, and public and private educational institutions through various channels, including direct-sales marketing, telemarketing, arrangements with third-party agents, company's Web site, and partnership relations. As of September 13, 2005, Qwest had 98 retail stores in 14 states. Qwest Communications is headquartered in Denver, Colorado at 1801 California Street, in the 2nd tallest building in Denver at 53 stories. The majority of Qwest occupational or non-management employees are represented by two labor unions; the Communications Workers of America and in Montana, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Qwest also has a state-of-the-art development center in Bangalore, India called Qwest Software Services.

History

Founded in 1996 by Philip Anschutz, Qwest began in an unconventional way. Anschutz, who owned the Southern Pacific Railroad at the time, began installing the first all-digital, fiber-optic infrastructure along his railroad lines and connecting them into central junctions in strategic locations to serve businesses with high-speed data and T1 services. In 1998, the Southern Pacific Railroad was merged into the Union Pacific, in which Qwest gained access to UP's railroad lines to lay fiber-optic cable for its telecom network. At that time Anshutz had a contract with MCI to lay nationwide fiber for them along the railway lines, he took advantage of this situation and laid his own fiber along with that of MCI.