Qwest Brings a Knife To a Utah Gun Fight

For years, Qwest has sent lawyers after communities who, unhappy with Qwest service, wanted to deploy their own broadband. The baby bell has been particularly aggressive in the state of Utah, where the telco sued the Utopia FTTH project in an effort to prevent them from using regional utility poles. The suit resulted a costly eighteen month delay in deployment of the wholesale service, which, through resellers like XMission, MStar and even AT&T, offers state residents symmetrical fiber connections for a fraction of the cost of slower Qwest service.

Qwest's Utah President, Jerry Fenn, has had no shortage of criticism for municipal fiber to the home deployments over the last decade, telling the press that Qwest is on "the other side of municipally backed telecom projects" mostly because "of the long-term harm to consumers." Back in 2003, Fenn asked the question: "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"

Years later, Qwest appears poised to throw a Ford Pinto into the equation. With Utopia facing potential meltdown, our users note that Qwest has finally deployed their "next-generation" broadband service in the parts of Utah. The service, advertised via Qwest's website as "fiber optic technology," is actually ADL2+ service that comes in flavors of 12Mbps/896kbps or 20Mbps/896kbps.

While Qwest advertises their 12Mbps tier for $46.99, that price requires you sign a two year contract and bundle $30 local voice service. If you do neither, users say your real price for 12Mbps/896kbps service will be closer to around $62 a month -- more when you add in the usual fees. Qwest's 20Mbps/896kbps tier is almost $100, with the same caveats driving that price tag closer to $120 if you're not in the mood for a long-term contract or copper Qwest phone service.

Considering local ISP MStar is offering symmetrical 15Mbps service for $39.95 and symmetrical 50Mbps connections for $59.95 through Utopia, surely locals are happy that Qwest has spent so much time in the state protecting consumer interests. Qwest has done a particularly good job protecting consumers from the dangers of upstream speed.

Source.

LoL, that's pretty funny. Great that Qwest's customers are now becoming ex-Qwest customers.