This is a sad story about the most babyish of the Baby
Bells, Qwest (Q). Aside from its legendary bad telephone service, Qwest has
distinguished itself by bravely going forward with a strategy of devoid of
wireless services, largely because they couldn’t afford it after what Joe
Nacchio did to the company while he was “running” it. Until a few weeks ago, I
thought they had the potential to make a respectable broadband play in their
territory – the same type of battle that Verizon is making with Comcast and
Time Warner.
Let me share a personal experience I had in trying to help
them create broadband competition in my area. I had heard that Qwest is building out fiber-optic broadband
and that it may have
hit my (upscale) neighborhood by now, so I checked out on the Web. Their web form for
more details requires a phone number (uncool) so I tried using their chat
instead. Here is the chat transcript:
Thank you
for using Qwest.com. A Qwest Sales and Service Consultant will
be with you in just a moment.
Qwest Rep: Thank you for contacting Qwest. How may I help you today?
Drainage: I currently am using Comcast broadband
service at my house and wonder if I can get a higher speed connection
Qwest Rep: Let's take a look. One moment.
Qwest Rep: Up to 3M Downstream / 640K Upstream is the fastest speed
available at this location.
Drainage: I don't want to provide a phone number, but if you can,
please notify me via email to let me know if/when I can get a higher speed. I
am currently getting about 6Mbs down and 3Mbs up
Qwest Rep: I will be right with you.
Qwest Rep: There are no due dates for expansion of services at this
location at this time.
Drainage: OK, Thanks for checking. Bye.
So, instead
of telling me that I would get put on the list, the response pretty much
indicates "it isn't happening in your lifetime". Encouraging, huh?
Now let’s take a look at some charts.
The daily
chart looks encouraging, with the 50 and 200 SMA’s sloping upwards and a nice
rally on volume in early January.
But the
weekly chart presents a more ambiguous picture, with some recovery from the
broken uptrend from October 2008 to July 2009, but now encountering very stiff
resistance at about $4.70. There is the possibility that this is an inverse
head and shoulders pattern, but any hope for a sharp up-move to complete the inverse
H&S pattern is tempered by the company’s broken business model and their
ongoing race to the bottom in customer service.
