Oct 1, 2001 12:00 PM,

Qwest reorganizes business markets group

Glenn Bischoff

Qwest Communications today announced it is breaking its business-markets unit into separate divisions--one of which will focus its efforts on the top 1000 global and national accounts, while the other will target national accounts outside of the top 1000.

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Joel Arnold, currently Qwest’s executive vice president-global business markets, has been promoted to executive vice president-global accounts, and will oversee the top-1000 unit. The second unit will be led Cliff Holtz, who has been promoted to executive vice president-national business accounts from executive vice president-small business markets.

Qwest Chairman & CEO Joseph Nacchio said changing market conditions driven by technology and exacerbated by the national tragedies make this the “right time for us to double down our efforts” to accelerate the company’s growth in national business markets.

“This has been the source of much of our growth--certainly most of our growth in old classic Qwest--and it will be the path of our growth over the next several years in the new Qwest,” he said.

In a related announcement, Qwest said it has signed a five-year agreement with Calpoint, which will provided managed wavelength services on an outsourced basis. The deal calls for Calpoint to assist Qwest in marketing and selling these services.

According to Nacchio, optical wavelength services are “where the basic private-line architecture … is moving,” and the company’s next-generation architecture--known as Q3--will reflect that. The deal with Calpoint, which will architect its services based on Qwest specifications and utilize equipment designated by the carrier, is an interim step.

“The next half step we wanted to take was to move to a managed wavelength service,” Nacchio said.

The service is scheduled to begin in February or March 2001. The deal calls for Qwest to realize revenues over the five-year period of $130 million, which is about three times what Qwest will spend to purchase capacity from Calpoint, said Nacchio.

--Glenn Bischoff, senior writer