January 17, 2002 -- AT&T questioned Qwest's about-face tactics of quietly seeking delays last week in both the Colorado and Nebraska 271 proceedings while issuing a press release the same day proclaiming progress and blaming AT&T for its previous problems. According to AT&T, the requests for delay were necessitated by a poor performance review from Liberty Consulting in which Qwest was found to be reporting inaccurate performance results in several critical areas.

"It surpasses strange that on the same day Qwest is busy blaming others for its problems that Qwest would itself seek delay," said Tom Pelto, AT&T vice president, Law & Government Affairs. "In any event, the Liberty report confirms what we've said all along: Qwest remains a monopoly because its wholesale performance is poor, its operational support systems don't work and its prices doom competitors to failure. Competitors start in a hole and Qwest won't stop digging.

"Bottom line, Qwest can cast blame wherever it wants, but these delays are self-inflicted and will persist unless and until Qwest fixes what is quite clearly broken," said Pelto. "Among other things, Qwest has been losing more than 50 percent of its competitors' billing records following conversion from Qwest and it fails to update customer service records for up to 30 days after customers change carriers. These are glaring gaps with severe downstream customer-affecting impacts. As even Qwest now acknowledges, it must address these problems before proceeding."

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