Qwest shopping everyone....

**boblocates** · July 14th, 2009, 12:37 AM

Anyone heard what states Qwest is looking to change locate companies?

**boblocates** · July 14th, 2009, 02:47 PM

Never mind, Thanks for all the emails.

**TheCableVine** · July 14th, 2009, 06:29 PM

What are the E-mails saying?

**boblocates** · July 15th, 2009, 01:51 AM

Seems like most of the ELM ran states, not heard much about the smaller stuff. Everyone seems to think change is coming.

**50/60** · July 16th, 2009, 02:40 PM

Management is having meeting with all tech's in Colorado today and tomorrow to let everyone know what is going on. I think change is comming....

**noOT4me** · July 16th, 2009, 04:55 PM

Originally Posted by 50/60

Management is having meeting with all tech's in Colorado today and tomorrow to let everyone know what is going on. I think change is comming....

Who do you work for? Please keep us posted.

**boblocates** · July 16th, 2009, 05:02 PM

They are still just meeting with the 3 companies and working out details. No one is close to being awarded anything.

**boblocates** · July 18th, 2009, 11:19 AM

LOWBALL - I heard today that overall Qwest has to cut their annual locate cost, in some markets as much as 1.2 mill.

It just goes back to..."you get what you pay for". Do they really care about protecting the facility or is it the "act" of caring.

I feel bad for the current companies working for them, understanding that they are not making a lot of money. Maybe someday everyone will stop and refuse to get beat down any lower.

**GWJ_CAS** · July 18th, 2009, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by boblocates

LOWBALL - I heard today that overall Qwest has to cut their annual locate cost, in some markets as much as 1.2 mill.

It just goes back to..."you get what you pay for". Do they really care about protecting the facility or is it the "act" of caring.

I feel bad for the current companies working for them, understanding that they are not making a lot of money. Maybe someday everyone will stop and refuse to get beat down any lower.

If each of the companies would refuse flat out, then have all of them use their out clause in the contract, usually 30 days notice, then have all companies band together and refuse to bid on locating their stuff...tell them to hire their own...they would $hit themselves and be stuck with either a massive hiring and training program (very expensive) or dealing with the locate companies fairly..

**TheCableVine** · July 18th, 2009, 12:52 PM

I may be wrong but I'm under the impression that money allocated for locates is cyclical. In the beginning they are with the program and do the locates themselves. They find it costs more than they thought so they contract it out. Their costs go down. The importance of locating eventually goes down in their eyes and somebody asks why they are paying so much for locates. Now they are faced with a problem. Do they take it in-house or find a lower bid. When taken in-house they are reminded of the cost. When they find a lower bid they are reminded of the quality. Poor locates results in down time for the system, loss of personnel to an unexpected problem (cut cable or fiber) and other problems associated. Now, the importance of locating goes up and the money spent is increased. Thus the cycle begins again.

Just an observation from a guy standing on the side of the road with paint in one hand and a receiver in the other.

**USIC1** · July 18th, 2009, 08:10 PM

CATV telephone service and wireless are bound to eat away at the non competitive union maintained copper side of the telcos...They will have to squeeze any, and everywhere...That means contract locate companys...I also dont think fios will be enough to sustain the competitiveness...

Wait until sprints/clearwire gets cranking... That service is backed financially by alot of heavy hitter corporations... I know Time Warner, Intel, Comcast are in on getting that wireless footprint edge...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearwire

We ll all be digging up copper cables in our 70s just like you see old men scavenging alumininum cans to supplement income...

HA!!!!

**underground quester** · July 19th, 2009, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by boblocates

LOWBALL - I heard today that overall Qwest has to cut their annual locate cost, in some markets as much as 1.2 mill.

It just goes back to..."you get what you pay for". Do they really care about protecting the facility or is it the "act" of caring.

I feel bad for the current companies working for them, understanding that they are not making a lot of money. Maybe someday everyone will stop and refuse to get beat down any lower.

Interesting isn't it how some corporations operate. Your word "has" as in has to cut costs is really misleading. Everything in life, EVERYTHING, is about choice. Someone somewhere in a corporation chooses that we "have" to cut cost to save money. It does NOT have to in order to survive in MOST cases, it choses to in order to strengthen shareholder return. But in most cases it does so without looking at long term implications in exchange for short term shareholder return.

Then in a year or so, when a similar problem arises, or, a problem that arises out of the short term mindset, then the sine wave of boom bust starts anew.

Here is what I used to do for a living.
I would step in to the middle of those situations and say okay, let's look at this. We have to save money somewhere, lets get ALL of the stakeholders (those people directly effected) together and talk about EVERYTHING, including money and job cuts.

We then set up quality action committees and set about looking at how things got done, why they got done that way, was there a better way, did it even need to be done, etc.

We would look at the issue from everyones perspective (in my case I worked for a major railrod in Canada, so we looked at the shipper, receiver, consignee, the carrier, logistics suppliers, everything and everyone).

Our raison d'etra (reason for being) was to see if we could find those savings in improvements to work process, changes in work design. In 95% of the cases our efforts produced results FAR, FAR greater than was anticipated, it smoothed out the roller coaster effect of money/job cuts and
produced better more stable returns for the shareholders. Today, that corporation still produces 100's of millions of dollars of return every quarter.

You would think that finding something like that would be a silver bullet for a great many corporations. You would be wrong. I grew old before my time fighting with everyone INCLUDING OWNERSHIP/Boards of directors to implement change. Because in many cases everyone really just wanted to take the easy road out and cut direct costs which again goes back to choice not "has" to.
I will say in most cases it was not the shop floor people I fought with...they knew what changes were necessary and why, in many cases.

Anyway, I have gone on too long....

**NINJA** · July 19th, 2009, 12:24 PM

Wow I guess I have been out of the loop alot longer then I thought. I was under the impression Qwest was no longer operating any longer I thought it was obsorbed by DYCOM ind. when they bought out utiliquest/sts. For some dumb reason that is not clear too me I honestly though Qwest was a non issue any longer.......stupid me.......