This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
One of the last visible reminders of Qwest Communication's presence in the Utah telecommunications marketplace vanished Tuesday.
CenturyLink Inc. placed its name permanently above the doors at Qwest's former Utah headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City. The Monroe, La.-based company purchased Qwest earlier this year in an all-stock deal valued at $12.2 billion.
"We're pretty much done now with our rebranding effort, especially here in Salt Lake City," said Larry Walters, CenturyLink's vice president and general manager for the Salt Lake Valley. "All our trucks have been repainted and all the bills now going out have the CenturyLink name on them."
The company's four-month rebranding effort culminated in Salt Lake City on Tuesday afternoon as Spencer and Nina Gillies, the son and daughter of Gillies Signs & Design owner Richard Gillies, climbed to put a new CenturyLink sign in place.
"We put a temporary sign up a couple of weeks ago but you could still see the Qwest name. We had to repaint all the panels to cover up it up," said Richard Gilles.
CenturyLink started as a small rural phone company in 1968. During the past decade it acquired a number of other rural companies. In 2009 it took over Embarg Corp., which at the time was the largest independent local exchange carrier in the country.
Its acquisition of Qwest created a company with 15 million phone lines. The only larger land-line phone companies are AT&T and Verizon.
Although CenturyLink's name is firmly in place in Utah, the competition for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of the state's consumers promises to be as intense as ever.
Almost immediately after CenturyLink completed its acquisition of Qwest, chief Utah rival Comcast started taking shots at its newly named competitor with advertising that targeted CenturyLink's high-speed DSL (digital subscriber line) products.
The ads featured the Slowskys, two tortoises who are portrayed as preferring CenturyLink's DSL Internet connections to Comcast's Xfinity products.
"We operate in a very competitive industry," said Comcast spokesman Ray Child.
CenturyLink spokesman Flemming Jensen said Comcast's moves were expected and agreed they are a sign that competition in the state's telecommunications marketplace is intense.
"We're proud of the products and services that we offer," he said. "CenturyLink is a company that is focused on providing consumers and businesses fast broadband and advanced communication services. And we're also a company that will be investing in our network and in our communities."
steve@sltrib.comTwitter: @OberbeckBiz
Bloomberg News contributed to this story.