Colorado Misses the Call

Before US West rang off, it won one last favor from the state.

A A A Comments By Stuart Steers Thursday, Jul 6 2000

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Qwest, which is very aware of these problems, claims it will invest more money in the network and make service a higher priority. There are signs it may already have influenced US West to change its ways: In the last six months, the number of service complaints against the phone company has started to drop.

A new management team will soon be in place, and it shouldn't take long to know whether or not Qwest will live up to its promises -- not that any of those promises were made to Colorado.

US West's Sol Trujillo is now unemployed.

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And with the telecommunications world in constant flux, there may soon be other mergers affecting telephone service in the state. The German phone company Deutsche Telekom, which almost derailed the US West/Qwest merger earlier this year when it expressed an interest in buying Qwest, is still sniffing around. Sprint and Bell South have also been mentioned as potential merger partners for Qwest.

But don't expect the PUC to demand anything from these companies if they wind up asking Colorado for merger approval.

"If it's an efficient merger, why attach any conditions to it?" Gifford asks. "It's inappropriate to depart from well-defined lawful behavior and treat [the merger] as a free-for-all. We're here to regulate monopoly power, and it's my view that we don't go beyond that."