Embattled accounting firm Arthur Andersen produced a white paper giving accounting advice on how to account for bandwidth swaps, which have come under increased scrutiny in light of the Global Crossing bankruptcy.

In the swaps, carriers would exchange bandwidth on different routs, counting the bandwidth received as a capital expense and the bandwidth given as revenue. The SEC is currently conducting an official investigation into Global Crossing’s accounting of such swaps. Likewise, it has requested documents from Qwest on the bandwidth trades.

A spokesman for Qwest confirmed that his company received the document, but declined to say how it was used. Global Crossing confirmed that it received used the document in accounting for bandwidth swaps.

--Toby Weber, staff writer