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Qwest (Q) In Nowhere Land

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Qwest made a profit in Q4. But, its revenue rose .2% to $3.488 billion. It picked up some broadband subscribers, but lost landline customers. While high-speed internet customers rose 44% over the same period a year ago, Qwest is more vulnerable than AT&T (T) and Verizon (V) to the dreaded "triple play" from the cable companies that bundles voice, TV, and broadband.

Qwest simply does not have the cake to build out a fiber broadband network. The company still has $13.4 billion in net debt (debt less cash). To get TV to customers it bundles DirecTV (DTV). It also has no cell phone operation to speak of.

Qwest has problems that it probably cannot solve. It has to chase internet users and hope that the revenue replaces landline customers who defect to cable.

Zero sum game.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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