Word: mci
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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WorldCom is now the country's fourth largest long-distance company--but it's a three-horse race. So instead of fighting for retail customers with AT&T, MCI and Sprint, WorldCom is creating something akin to its own private global telecommunications network. It has made 40 acquisitions in the past five years, including one that netted UUNet, the world's largest provider of high-speed hookups to the Internet. That's why WorldCom agreed to pay $1.2 billion for CompuServe and then traded that company's consumer subscribers to AOL in exchange for ANS, AOL's own networking...
...spare $50 million. The federal government is financing university research into a new Internet technology called the gigapop, that will connect at a screaming speed ? 1 million times faster than a 28.8 modem. But considering the cost of the traffic-sorting gigapops, only the giant telcos such as MCI will be able to afford them when they arrive, in approximately 2002. Small-time service providers will most likely be left to wither on the slower-connection vine: One analyst predicts the gigapop could kill most small ISPs within five years...
...Agent Services in Phoenix, Ariz.; two of its own regional centers; and a few stray agreements with Baby Bells. Thus when you're in, say, Oregon calling to find a Florida number, your long-distance information operator is now likely to be in Phoenix; Scranton, Pa.; or Augusta, Ga. (MCI and Sprint still have agreements with the Bells--but that could change too once they start competing locally...
...California AT&T had hoped to add local subscribers at the rate of 5,000 a day. But Bennett says Pacific Bell has been installing local service for only about 100 new AT&T customers a day, forcing him to scale back marketing efforts in the Golden State. New MCI subscribers have experienced similar delays. Jonathan Sallet, MCI's chief policy counsel, says PacBell takes an average of three weeks to switch on MCI customers in California, although PacBell switches on its own clients in seven days. Replies a spokesman for PacBell parent SBC: "We have spent $1.2 billion...
...sister Bells say the real problem is that AT&T and MCI do not want to get into the local market, because to do so would free the Bells to compete in the long-distance domain. Says Jim Ellis, SBC's general counsel: "We can bring them [the long-distance companies] to water, but we can't make them drink." Retorts Dan Schulman, AT&T's vice president for local marketing: "To say that we're not interested in moving into local residential service could not be farther from the truth...