KPNQwest
Encyclopedia
KPN
KPN is a Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications company, including both 2G and 3G mobile operations...
and Qwest
Qwest
Qwest Communications International, Inc. was a large United States telecommunications carrier. Qwest provided local service in 14 western U.S. states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.On April...
Communications International Inc., the Internet communications company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
The company was set to bring together the state-of-the-art fibre-optic networks of the two partners and the Internet services expertise and customer base of EUnet
EUnet
The roots of EUnet go back to 1982 and the first international UUCP connections. From a very loose collaboration of individual sites under the auspices of the EUUG , it evolved to the fully commercial entity EUnet International Ltd.In April 1998 the company was sold to Qwest Communications...
International. The company planned to build and operate a high-capacity European fibre optic, Internet Protocol-based network that was to span 13,000 kilometers when completed 2001.
During its history of less than four years, KPNQwest created a unique, nothing-is-impossible working spirit and company culture among its 2,500 employees under the leadership of an AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
veteran Jack McMaster.
The company collapsed in a spectacular bankruptcy in 2002, after having acquired Global TeleSystems (GTS) including the EBONE
EBONE
EBONE was a pan-European Internet backbone. It went online in September 1992 and was deactivated in July 2002. Some portions of the EBONE were sold to other companies and continue to operate today.-Formation:...
network. The bankruptcy was largely due to the general Dot-com boom which created highly inflated capacity demands for telecom operators. Facing this situation, many operators started to make large network capacity deals with each other, called hollow swaps. These swaps created artificial revenue figures and thus provided incorrect financial guidance to the company management and investors.
In year 2000 it was estimated that KPNQwest backbone was carrying more than 50% of European IP traffic.