Qwest Ends Quest for New Wireless Partner Amid Profit Losses

The agreement with Verizon Wireless, co-owned by Vodafone plc, will supplant the Sprint arrangement when that contract expires early in 2009. Qwest, the No. 3 phone company in the United States, has been without wireless holdings since 2005, when it sold its spectrum licenses to Verizon Wireless for $418 million.

Before selecting Verizon as its new provider, the RBOC also was talking with AT&T Inc., which has GSM-based service. Qwest’s Sprint-based offering is a CDMA service, so moving subscribers to Verizon’s CDMA network would be a less painful transition for end users, requiring no handset exchanges.

Qwest serves 824,000 wireless subscribers.