Qwest

Qwest Communications International Inc. [ kwɛst ] was an American telecommunications company based in Denver ( Colorado). The company was founded in 1996 by Philip Anschutz. Qwest offered telecommunications services in the 14 western U.S. states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Qwest and the Dutch national telecom operator KPN founded in 1998 along the pan-European data and hosting company KPNQwest. In November 1999, KPNQwest was taken public on NASDAQ and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Following the dot-com bubble KPNQwest went in 2002 as one of the then most important European IP network operators in bankruptcy: its network transported an estimated 50 % of European IP traffic.

On 22 April 2010 CenturyLink announced that they would take over Qwest through a share swap. Since August 8, 2011 the former operations of Qwest be performed under the name CenturyLink.