Qwest and US WEST (non) routing problems

["Bessant, Chuck" <Chuck.Bessant () firstworld com>]

I have been working a ticket with Qwest regarding our upstream through them
in Portland.  I was informed by a Qwest engineer that, as a result of their
merger with US West, they are under an FCC mandate not to traffic data
directly through AS3908.  This AS serves the NW and the Denver area
according to this engineer.  

THE CAVEAT as related by the engineer is as follows:  our advertisements
should, technically, be propagated out to the Internet...however, all
traffic would first hit Qwest's network, then go through the Cable &
Wireless network, then back through Qwest to us...in other words, even if
our routes *were* being propagated properly, we would probably have to do
some kind of prepending or other preferencing to get traffic flowing in
Qwest's direction and even then it would certainly not be an optimal path
through the network.  

Has anyone experienced this problem with AS3908 & Qwest?

Thanks.

Chuck