Qwest_Corporation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Qwest Corporation Qwest Corporation This article refers to the local telephone operating company. For the holding company, see Qwest. Qwest Corporation Telephone Dispatch Company opened for business on 24 February, 1879. The Denver exchange was the seventeenth in the nation, opening just nine days after the Minneapolis exchange. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News reported "The Telephone Company are adding new subscribers to the system every day." Type Founded Headquarters Industry Products Parent Private (Subsidiary of Qwest) 1911[1] Denver, Colorado, USA Telecommunications Local Telephone Service AT&T (1911-1983) U S WEST (1984-2000) Qwest (2000-present) Malheur Bell El Paso County Telephone http://www.qwest.com/ 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. 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 their calling area. When the American Bell Company won their patent infringement suit with Western Union, the Bell companies absorbed the Western Union companies. In Denver, competition for local service was absent from the market until 1997. In 1880, Vaille sold two of his four franchise contracts back to American Bell, who sold them to Horace Tabor in Leadville. In January 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. Subsidiaries Website 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. History Mountain Bell 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 1 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Qwest Corporation 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. Rocky Mountain Bell The Denver Dispatch Company was less than two years old when the Rocky Mountain Telephone Company began in Salt Lake City, Utah with less than 100 subscribers. With the financial backing of American Bell, The Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company replaced Rocky Mountain Telephone in 1883. Rocky Mountain Bell immediately began an aggressive campaign to buy nearly every small telephone company in the region, and their operating territory soon covered nearly all of Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. A combination of overspending, careless management, and the logistical difficulties of covering an extremely large, sparsely-populated territory would eventually put Rocky Mountain Bell in financial trouble. Northwestern Bell Northwestern Bell logo 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. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph These business practices stopped with the birth of the Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company. Vaille 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. Vaille served as a Mountain States director until his death in 1920. Pacific Northwest Bell MST&T commonly did business as Mountain States Telephone until 1969, when the new Bell System logo came into use and the company name was shortened to Mountain Bell. However, the legal name of the company remained The Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company. The company 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 date with Qwest. Prior to 1984, AT&T held a stake of 88.6% in Mountain Bell. Pacific Northwest Bell logo, 1984–1991 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. 2 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Qwest Corporation telephones under the Northwestern Bell name, which are still produced under the BELL Phones by Northwestern Bell Phones brand. Ownership Change USWEST Corporate Logo, 1984-2000 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. Acquisition In 2000, Qwest Communications International acquired U S WEST in a hostile takeover. At the time, U S WEST, was trying to acquire Global Crossing, and resisted Qwest’s takeover. Qwest was a much smaller company in terms of employees and market capitalization when it obtained control of the Bell operating company. Because U S WEST’s stock was trading at very high prices during the dot-com bubble, Qwest was able to purchase the larger firm, which was renamed Qwest Corporation[4]. U S WEST Communications U S WEST Communications logo, 1991-2000 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 U S WEST founded in the mid-90s that included U S WEST’s local telephone operations. Their tracking stock symbol was USW. Non-telephone assets, such as their directory operations and cable television services were housed under U S WEST Media Group, whose tracking stock symbol was UMG. The latter was spun off as MediaOne, and their 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, who had been producing phones under the "La Phone" brand, the right to become the exclusive licensee to produce 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. References [1] Colorado Secretary of State [2] Articles of Merger, January 1, 1991, Pacific Northwest Bell, Colorado Secretary of State [3] Articles of Merger, January 1, 1991, Northwestern Bell, Colorado Secretary of State [4] Articles of Amendment to the Articles of Incorporation, July 5, 2000, Colorado Secretary of State See also • Northwestern Bell • Pacific Northwest Bell External links • Qwest home page • FCC Info: Qwest Corporation • Malheur Bell history Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest_Corporation" Categories: Qwest, Bell System, Companies established in 1911, Companies based in Colorado 3 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Qwest Corporation This page was last modified on 9 April 2009, at 17:01 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) taxdeductible nonprofit charity. 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