Donna Jaegers Quotations

(Level 3) still has a few more quarters before building sales momentum, but it's not going to go bankrupt - not right away at least. I think they're OK for a few years.

Level 3 is trying to consolidate the small players, trying to amass enough local scale so they don't have to build everything (from scratch).

If this works for Level 3, this is a real turning point. This really gives them a good footprint in the mid-Atlantic and the Southeast.

I think there still were some hoping that BellSouth and Qwest would come together, so this takes away a possible merger partner for Qwest.

People involved in the day-to-day, they often miss turning points. They get beaten down after so many years. Or they're burned out. They may have stock options but don't believe they're going to be valuable.

The one thing that Qwest has is its local franchise, and over the next two years it's going to become increasingly embattled as (cable company) Comcast starts rolling out more aggressively with their digital voice service. I don't think they get acquired at all.

Qwest is definitely the orphan Bell. I really don't see Qwest as an attractive acquisition target for several years.

They're doing all the right things to play defense. It's hard to win longer-term just playing defense, and they don't have a lot of offensive weapons.

They're continuing to show stable revenues and to reap the benefits of the cost-cutting they did last year.

For Level 3, this helps their wholesale positioning because they can sell more to carriers if they can deliver it all the way to that customer's doorstep.

It shows it's not just running after (just) any customer. The future trend is pretty positive but I don't expect any major moves in the share price.

It's so rare for anything in the telecom sector to show any kind of growth, but they're taking it away from AT&T and MCI and the Baby Bells.

It will be interesting to see how they finesse that.

All that could be pulled into the West umbrella.