Posted on 02/03/2005 7:00:02 AM PST by retrokitten
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Telephone company MCI Inc. (Nasdaq:MCIP - news) has received a $6 billion takeover bid from Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE:Q - news) and has held talks with another potential suitor, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ - news), sources familiar with the situation said on Thursday.
Although MCI has been looking for a buyer for months, interest in the company intensified after long-distance rival AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news) last week agreed to be acquired by SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC - news) for $16 billion, the sources said.
Long-distance companies have been slammed by eroding long-distance revenue, price wars and increased competition, but they serve high-spending corporate customers, a client base that the Baby Bells want to tap.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
Let's see...MCI merges with Qwest, then Verizon and Qwest merge. That corporation could then merge with SBC and they could call it ....... AT&T! What a novel concept!
LOL! It says further down in the article that Verizon has also expressed an interest in MCI, but has not made a formal offer as of yet.
Bell South is the only sensible RBOC. So far, they have stayed out of merger mania. AT&T is a shadow of its former self. I retired from AT&T in 1999 after 38 years of service and I saw the company when it was in its hey day. After divestiture, AT&T tried to redifine itself and its management made some terrible decisions. (NCR's hostile takeover was one, getting into local service was another. Now, it seems that parts of "MA BELL" are coming back together. Through it all, the customers and the shareholders of AT&T have suffered the most.
Qwest had best get rid of the MCI management then (full disclosure - I am a former MCI customer, and they could not do anything right. M stands for Maggot, C stands for Cluster----, I stands for Idiot. WorldCom is short for World of Incompetence. End of rant).
As for teletech's comment about AT&T, I think AT&T could have survived the court ordered divestiture, if it were not for Robert Allen (a.k.a. Mister Rogers, an inside term for the worst CEO in AT&T history). The NCR was just one blunder. A bigger problem with AT&T was it's kowtowing to political pressure groups within the company. Maintaining on overhead a large staff of "diversity zampolits".
It isn't as though BellSouth hasn't tried! They tried to get Sprint, they tried to get GTE, they even tried to get MCI at one time. Meanwhile, we are now down to three RBHCs plus Sprint.
I thought MCI stood for "Most Cluttered Infrastructure".
I'm not so sure that owning a long distance company is a good move. Maybe Bell South should stay with its core local service business and expand its wireless business.
Why?
LOL, except that AT & T has already been bought by Cingular.
That was my point -- eventually, it all ends up where it started.
Regards.
The mergers may be bad, but at least I'd get some decent service in my small town, my local independant telco is absolute crap...
Many Changes Instantly
Only problem is, Qwest is hindered by more than $17 billion in debt (they sold off their properties to smaller local phone companies in several western states many years ago), yet by the same token, they lack wireless unit and largely lack competition from cable and high-speed data companies.
Right, and the Verizon's, MCI's, SBC's, Southern Bell's, and Qwest's of the world were once AT&T.
The only complaints I have with my local independently owned telco is their internet service which is spotty at best. Also, their cell service is still analog, its sucks, and doesn't reach me, even though the tower is 6 miles distance away as the crow flies. You have to spend a fortune just to get ADSL (if your lucky enough to live close enough to the nearest central office).
They did wise up and realize that their customer base (farmers and ranchers) would end up making long distance phone calls to order equipment parts in town.
Nowadays, I can call someone 100 miles away (in the local telephone coverage area) and it's a local call. Before that, the neighbor that lives a mile west of me was a long distance phone call.
Ours is junk, plain and simple, all the equipment is really old, dsl sucks...I'm thinking of just getting wireless and telling the local telco to go sit and spin...I'm not remotely happy with them anymore.
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