Their CEO was prosecuted to hell and back for daring to do this, and the company was forced to sell to a competitor. Nobody even remembers his name anymore, few people even remember Qwest.
Edit: maybe not. Wikipedia says he was convicted in 2007. However, I was given an NDA regarding something that sounded related at some point after that, so...
You skipped the part where he acquired a competitor under false accounting, contributing to monopolization, as dumping his stock with irregular sales while to profit from value NSA contracts before the public knew they were canceled. Should a CEO make a fortune selling stock while the company loses 90% of its market cap?
> Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, alleged in appeal documents that the NSA requested that Qwest participate in its wiretapping program more than six months before September 11, 2001. Nacchio recalls the meeting as occurring on February 27, 2001. Nacchio further claims that the NSA cancelled a lucrative contract with Qwest as a result of Qwest's refusal to participate in the wiretapping program. Nacchio surrendered April 14, 2009 to a federal prison camp in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania to begin serving a six-year sentence for an insider trading conviction. The United States Supreme Court denied bail pending appeal the same day.
He was happy to get paid hundreds of millions of dollars for spying on his customers, but didn't want to spy on his customers? What did he think those contracts were for?
Maybe internet transit or MPLS services, which were the company’s core product?
I won’t argue for a second that he was a good guy, but CEOs rarely get involved in the details of customer contracts. Especially in giant telcos.