Level 3, through its two 50% owned joint-venture surface mines, one each in Montana and Wyoming, sold coal primarily through long-term contracts with public utilities. In November 2011, Level 3 completed the sale of its coal mining business to Ambre Energy Limited as part of its long-term strategy to focus on core business operations. As a result of the transaction, all of the assets and liabilities associated with the coal mining business have been removed from Level 3's balance sheet. The financial results of the coal mining business are included in the Company's consolidated results of operations through the date of sale, and all periods presented have been revised to reflect the presentation within discontinued operations.
Business Strategy and Objectives
The Company pursues the strategies discussed in Item 1. Business, "Business Overview and Strategy" as discussed in its Form 10-K, as amended, for the year ended December 31, 2011. In particular, with respect to strategic financial objectives, the Company focuses its attention on the following:
• growing Core Network Services revenue by increasing sales;

• continually improving the customer experience to increase customer retention and reduce customer churn;

• completing the integration of acquired businesses;

• reducing network costs and operating expenses;

• achieving sustainable generation of positive cash flows from operations in excess of capital expenditures;

• continuing to show improvement in Adjusted EBITDA (as defined in this Item below) as a percentage of revenue;

• concentrating its capital expenditures on those technologies and assets that enable the Company to develop its Core Network Services;

• managing Wholesale Voice Services for margin contribution; and

• refinancing its future debt maturities.

The Company's management continues to review all existing lines of business and service offerings to determine how those lines of business and service offerings enhance the Company's focus on delivery of communications services and meeting its financial objectives. To the extent that certain lines of business or service offerings are not considered to be compatible with the delivery of the Company's services or with meeting its financial objectives, Level 3 may exit those lines of business or stop offering those services in part or in whole. The successful integration of acquired businesses into Level 3, including Global Crossing, is important to the success of Level 3. The Company must identify synergies and integrate acquired networks and support organizations, while maintaining the service quality levels expected by customers to realize the anticipated benefits of any acquisitions. Successful integration of any acquired businesses will depend on the Company's ability to manage the operations, realize opportunities for revenue growth presented by strengthened service offerings and expanded geographic market coverage, and eliminate redundant and excess costs to fully realize the expected synergies. If the Company is not able to efficiently and effectively integrate any businesses or operations it acquires, the Company may experience material negative consequences to its business, financial condition or results of operations.
The Company has also been focused on improving its liquidity, financial condition, and extending the maturity dates of certain debt.
In March 2012, the Company exchanged approximately $100 million aggregate principal amount of its outstanding 15% Convertible Senior Notes due 2013 for approximately 3.7 million shares of Level 3's common stock into which the notes were convertible plus an additional 1.7 million shares for a total of approximately 5.4

million shares. See Note 8 - Long-Term Debt in the notes to the consolidated financial statements for additional information.

In January 2012, Level 3 Financing, Inc., a first-tier, wholly owned subsidiary of Level 3, issued $900 million aggregate principal amount of its 8.625% Senior Notes due 2020 in a private transaction. A portion of the net proceeds from the offering were used in February 2012 to redeem all of Level 3 Financing's outstanding 9.25% Senior Notes due 2014 in aggregate principal amount of $807 million.
The Company will continue to look for opportunities to improve its financial position and focus its resources on growing revenue and managing costs for the business.

Revenue and Service Offerings
(dollars in millions)                         Three Months Ended March 31,
                                                      2012                   2011
Core Network Services:
 North America - Wholesale Channel    $              381                    $ 327
 North America - Enterprise Channel                  610                      323
 EMEA - Wholesale Channel                             92                       50
 EMEA - Enterprise Channel                            79                       28
 EMEA - U.K. Government Channel                       48                        -
 Latin America - Wholesale Channel                    34                        1
 Latin America - Enterprise Channel                  138                        -
Total Core Network Services           $            1,382                    $ 729
Wholesale Voice Services and Other                   204                      185
Total Revenue                         $            1,586                    $ 914

Total revenue consists of:
• Core Network Services revenue from colocation and datacenter services, transport and fiber, IP and data services, and voice services.

• Wholesale Voice Services and Other revenue from long distance voice services, revenue from managed modem and its related intercarrier compensation services and revenue from the "SBC Master Services Agreement," which was obtained through an acquisition in 2005.

Core Network Services revenue represents higher margin services and Wholesale Voice Services and Other revenue represents lower margin services. Core Network Services revenue requires different levels of investment and focus and provides different contributions to the Company's operating results than Wholesale Voice Services and Other revenue. Management of Level 3 believes that growth in revenue from its Core Network Services is critical to the long-term success of its business. The Company also believes it must continue to effectively manage gross margin contribution from the Wholesale Voice Services component and the positive cash flows from the Other revenue component of Wholesale Voice Services and Other revenue. The Company believes that trends in its communications business are best gauged by analyzing revenue changes in Core Network Services.

Core Network Services
Growth in transport and fiber revenue is largely dependent on increased demand for bandwidth services and available capital of companies requiring communications capacity for their own use or in providing capacity as a service provider to their customers. These expenditures may be in the form of monthly payments or up-front

payments for private line, wavelength or dark fiber services. The Company is focused on providing end-to-end transport and fiber services to its customers to directly connect customer locations with a private network. Pricing for end-to-end metropolitan transport services have been relatively stable. For intercity transport and fiber services, the Company continues to experience pricing pressure for point-to-point locations, particularly in locations where a large number of carriers co-locate their facilities. An increase in demand may be offset by declines in unit pricing.
Colocation and data center services allow customers to place their network equipment and servers in suitable environments maintained by the Company with high-speed links providing on net access to more than 45 countries. These services are secure, redundant and flexible to fit the varying needs of the Company's customers. Services include hosting network equipment used to transport high speed data and voice over Level 3's global network; providing managed IT services (hosting), installation, maintenance, storage and monitoring of enterprise services; and providing comprehensive IT outsource solutions.

IP and data services primarily include the Company's high speed Internet protocol service ("IP"), dedicated Internet access ("DIA") service, Asynchronous Transfer mode ("ATM") and frame relay services, virtual private network ("VPN") services, content delivery network ("CDN") service, media delivery service, Vyvx broadcast service and Converged Business Network service. Level 3's IP and high speed IP service is high quality and is offered in a variety of capacities. The Company's VPN service permits businesses of any size to replace multiple networks with a single, cost-effective solution that greatly simplifies the converged transmission of voice, video, and data. This convergence to a single platform can be obtained without sacrificing the quality of service or security levels of traditional ATM and frame relay offerings. VPN service also permits customers to prioritize network application traffic so that high priority applications, such as voice and video, are not compromised in performance by the flow of low priority applications such as email.

The Company believes that one of the largest sources of future incremental demand for the Company's Core Network Services will be from customers that are seeking to distribute their feature rich content or video over the Internet. Revenue growth in this area is dependent on the continued increase in demand from customers and the pricing environment. An increase in the reliability and security of information transmitted over the Internet and declines in the cost to transmit data have resulted in increased utilization of e-commerce or web based services by businesses. Although the pricing for data services is currently relatively stable, the IP market is generally characterized by price compression and high unit growth rates depending upon the type of service. The Company experienced price compression in the high-speed IP and voice services markets in 2011 and expects that this will continue during 2012.

The following provides a discussion of the Company's Core Network Services revenue in terms of the enterprise and wholesale channels.

• The enterprise channel includes large, multi-national enterprises requiring large amounts of bandwidth to support their business operations, such as financial services companies, healthcare companies, content providers, and portal and search engine companies. It also includes medium enterprises and regional service providers who buy services regionally or locally, as well as government markets, including the U.S. federal government, the systems integrators supporting the U.S. federal government, U.S. state and local governments, academic consortia, and certain academic institutions. Included in the enterprise channel, but broken out separately in the table above, is the U.K. government channel, which includes revenue primarily from the government sector in the U.K.

• The wholesale channel includes revenue from incumbent and alternative carriers in each of the regions, global carriers, wireless carriers, cable companies, satellite companies, and voice service providers.

The Company believes that the alignment of Core Network Services around channels should allow it to drive growth while enabling it to better focus on the needs of its customers. Each of these channels is supported by dedicated employees in sales. Each of these channels is also supported by non-dedicated, centralized service delivery and management, product management and development, corporate marketing, global network services, engineering, information technology, and corporate functions, including legal, finance, strategy and human

resources.
Wholesale Voice Services and Other
The Company offers wholesale voice services that target large and existing markets. The revenue potential for wholesale voice services is large; however, the pricing and margins are expected to continue to decline over time as a result of the new low-cost IP and optical-based technologies. In addition, the market for wholesale voice services is being targeted by many competitors, several of which are larger and have more financial resources than the Company. The Company also has other revenue derived from mature services that are not critical areas of emphasis for the Company, including revenue from managed modem and its related intercarrier compensation services and SBC Contract Services, which includes revenue from the "SBC Master Services Agreement," which was obtained in the December 2005 acquisition of WilTel Communications Group, LLC. The Company and its customers continue to see consumers migrate from narrow band dial-up services to higher speed broadband services as the narrow band market matures. The Company expects ongoing declines in the other revenue component of Wholesale Voice Services and Other similar to what has been experienced over the past several years.
The Company receives compensation from other carriers when it terminates traffic originating on those carriers' networks. This intercarrier compensation is based on interconnection agreements with the respective carriers or rates mandated by the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"). The Company has interconnection agreements in place for the majority of traffic subject to intercarrier compensation. Along with addressing other matters, on November 18, 2011, the FCC established a prospective intercarrier compensation framework for terminating switched access and Voice Over Internet Protocol ("VoIP") traffic, with elements of it becoming effective beginning on December 29, 2011. Under the framework, most terminating switched access charges and all intercarrier compensation charges are capped at current levels, and will be reduced to zero over, as relevant to Level 3, a six year transition period beginning July 1, 2012. Several states, industry groups, and other telecommunications carriers filed petitions in federal court for reconsideration of the framework with the FCC, although the outcome of those petitions is unpredictable. A majority of the Company's existing intercarrier compensation revenue is associated with agreements that have expired terms, but remain effective in evergreen status. As these and other interconnection agreements expire, the Company will continue to evaluate simply allowing them to continue in evergreen status (so long as the counterparty allows the same) or negotiating new agreements. The Company earns intercarrier compensation revenue from providing managed modem services, which are declining. The Company also receives intercarrier compensation from its voice services. In this case, intercarrier compensation is reported within Core Network Services revenue.
For a detailed description of the Company's broad range of communications services, please see Item 1. Business - "Our Services Offerings" of the Company's Form 10-K, as amended, for the year ended December 31, 2011 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Critical Accounting Policies
Refer to Item 7 of the Company's Form 10-K, as amended, for the year ended December 31, 2011 for a description of the Company's critical accounting policies.

Results of Operations for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2012 and 2011:

                                              Three Months Ended March 31,
                                                                        Change
(dollars in millions)                        2012            2011          %

Revenue                                  $    1,586       $     914       74  %

Cost of Revenue                                 657             357       84  %
Depreciation and Amortization                   187             203       (8 )%
Selling, General and Administrative             622             357       74  %
Restructuring Charges                             4               -       NM
Total Costs and Expenses                      1,470             917       60  %
Operating Income (Loss)                         116              (3 )     NM
Other Income (Expense):
Interest income                                   1               -       NM
Interest expense                               (189 )          (157 )     20  %
Loss on extinguishment of debt, net             (61 )           (20 )    205  %
Other, net                                        9               3      200  %
Total Other Expense                            (240 )          (174 )     38  %
Loss Before Income Taxes                       (124 )          (177 )    (30 )%
Income Tax Expense                              (14 )           (27 )    (48 )%
Loss from Continuing Operations                (138 )          (204 )    (32 )%
Loss from Discontinued Operations, Net            -              (1 )   (100 )%
Net Loss                                 $     (138 )     $    (205 )    (33 )%

NM - Not meaningful

Discussion of all significant variances:

Total Revenue by Service Offering
                                               Three Months Ended March 31,
 (dollars in millions)                          2012                2011     Change %
Core Network Services                $       1,382                 $ 729        90 %
Wholesale Voice Services and Other             204                   185        10 %
Total Revenue                        $       1,586                 $ 914        74 %

Revenue increased 74% to $1.586 billion in the three months ended March 31, 2012 from $914 million in the same period of 2011. The increase is primarily driven by the additional revenue associated with the Global Crossing acquisition during the fourth quarter of 2011. Excluding revenue from the Global Crossing acquisition, revenue from enterprise customers contributed to the growth in Core Network Services revenue.

The Company experienced growth in each of its service offerings during the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to the same period in 2011 as a result of the Global Crossing acquisition. Excluding revenue from the Global Crossing acquisition, revenue growth in IP and data services, voice services, and colocation and datacenter services during the three months ended March 31, 2012 was driven primarily by end customer demand for content delivery over the internet and enterprise bandwidth, as well as increased usage for voice services. Growth in transport and fiber services was relatively flat during the first quarter of 2012.

Core Network Services revenue increased in the North America, EMEA and Latin America regions during the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to the same period of 2011 primarily as a result of the Global Crossing acquisition. Excluding revenue from the Global Crossing acquisition, revenue increased in the North America and EMEA regions during the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to the same period of 2011.

Wholesale Voice Services and Other revenue increased in the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to the same period in 2011 as a result of the Global Crossing acquisition. Excluding revenue from the Global Crossing acquisition, Wholesale Voice Services and Other revenue decreased in the three months ended March 31, 2012 due to declines in usage. The Company continues to manage its combined wholesale voice services platform for margin growth, and expects continued volatility in revenue as a result of this strategy. In addition, the Company expects managed modem and SBC Contract Services revenue to continue to decline due to an increase in the number of subscribers migrating to broadband services and as a result of the migration of the SBC traffic to the AT&T network, respectively.

Cost of Revenue includes leased capacity, right-of-way costs, access charges, satellite transponder lease costs, and other third party costs directly attributable to the network, but excludes depreciation and amortization and related impairment expenses.

Cost of revenue as a percentage of total revenue was 41% in the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to 39% in the same period of the prior year. The increase is due to inclusion of costs associated with the Global Crossing acquisition in the current year period compared to the same period of 2011. This increase was partially offset by an improving gross margin mix from higher margin on-net Core Network Services and a decrease in lower margin Wholesale Voice Services and Other. Additionally, the Company continues to implement initiatives to reduce both fixed and variable network expenses.

Depreciation and Amortization expense decreased 8% to $187 million in the three months ended March 31, 2012 from $203 million in the same period of 2011. The decrease is attributable to a change in the estimated useful lives of certain of the Company's property, plant and equipment that resulted in a reduction of depreciation expense

in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same period of 2011. The change in accounting estimate was applied on a prospective basis effective October 1, 2011 as required under the accounting standard related to changes in accounting estimates. This decrease was partially offset by additional depreciation and amortization as a result of the Global Crossing acquisition.

Selling, General and Administrative ("SG&A") expenses include salaries, wages and related benefits (including non-cash, stock-based compensation expenses), property taxes, travel, insurance, rent, contract maintenance, advertising, accretion expense on asset retirement obligations and other administrative expenses. SG&A expenses also include certain network related expenses such as network facility rent, utilities and maintenance costs.

SG&A expenses increased 74% to $622 million in the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to $357 million in the same period of 2011. The increase is primarily due to SG&A expenses associated with the Global Crossing acquisition, including integration costs of approximately $15 million, higher employee compensation and related costs as the Company continued to increase its sales, support and customer service delivery headcount since the first quarter of 2011, and merit increases effective in the first quarter of 2012. These increases were partially offset by cost synergies achieved as a result of the Global Crossing acquisition in the three months ended March 31, 2012.

Also included in SG&A expenses in the three months ended March 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively, were $24 million and $25 million, respectively, of non-cash, stock-based compensation expenses related to grants of outperform stock options, restricted stock units, accruals for the Company's discretionary bonus, and shares issued for the Company's matching contribution for the 401(k) plan.

Restructuring Charges in the three months ended March 31, 2012 were $4 million compared to less than $1 million in the same period of 2011. The increase in the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to the same period of 2011 was primarily due to reductions in headcount associated with the Global Crossing acquisition, as the Company had not initiated any significant new workforce reduction plans in 2011.

The Company may initiate additional restructuring activities in 2012 in connection with the efforts to optimize its cost structure or in connection with the Amalgamation of Global Crossing. Additional restructuring activities could result in additional headcount reductions and related charges.

Adjusted EBITDA, as defined by the Company, is net income (loss) from the consolidated statements of operations before (1) income tax benefit (expense),
(2) total other income (expense), (3) non-cash impairment charges included within restructuring charges, (4) depreciation and amortization expense,
(5) non-cash stock compensation expense included within selling, general and administrative expenses and (6) discontinued operations.

Adjusted EBITDA is not a measurement under generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP") and may not be used in the same way by other companies. Management believes that Adjusted EBITDA is an important part of the Company's . . .