Aside from a grammar issue, I found this release titled The Perception of Qwest, discussing Qwest’s business model to be a good overview of why the carrier is forced to put together this huge deal with MCI.

Here is a key paragraph:

Qwest realizes they have to do something if they want to continue to grow. Their legacy markets are under attack on many fronts and they strategically are not positioned in the fast growing wireless sector. “Doing nothing” relegates them to managing a shrinking business and that is not why a man of Notebart’s stature took the CEO role. Qwest knows getting MCI is a long shot and that their actions will likely force Verizon to pay more but still leave Qwest without MCI. You can’t fault Qwest however because if one doesn’t play, there is no chance of winning. Qwest has to take the chance and risk failure in pursuing MCI. At some level Qwest has some hope that they could indeed pull off the MCI deal and take defeat a slow moving RBOC like Verizon. While very unlikely, Verizon’s cocky industry position could bolster an attitude that they don’t need to respond to Qwest and ultimately lose the deal to MCI shareholder insistence on taking the higher bid.