Qwest - History

History

Founded in 1996 by Philip Anschutz, Qwest began in an unconventional way. Anschutz, who owned the Southern Pacific Railroad at the time, established the subsidiary Southern Pacific Telecommunications Company and 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 1997, 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. In 1995, SP Telecom moved from San Francisco to Denver, after acquiring the Dallas-based firm Qwest Communications Corp. which owned a digital microwave system and took over its name and facilities. The Qwest headquarters were at 555 17th Street.

Qwest Communications grew aggressively, acquiring internet service provider SuperNet in 1997, followed by the acquisition of LCI, a low cost long distance carrier (located in Dublin, Ohio and McLean, Virginia) in 1998, and followed again by the acquisition of Icon CMT, a web hosting provider, also in 1998. This launched Qwest as not only a provider of high speed data to the niche market of corporate customers, but also a quick-growing residential and business long distance customer base that it quickly merged into its data service.

Qwest partnered with the Dutch national telecom operator KPN to create the pan-European data communications and hosting company KPNQwest. KPNQwest was formed in November 1998 and went on to launch an Initial Public Offering on the Nasdaq and Amsterdam stock Exchanges in November 1999. KPNQwest collapsed in bankruptcy in 2002.