It's still a multiprotocol world, Bernie
By David Rohde
Mergers stink, don't they? If you've ever gone through one, you know how the uncertainty and back-room
maneuvering rob energy from the customer focus.
Yet much of the reaction to the MCI/WorldCom merger is favorable. Is it merited? In one key way it is.
The deal pairs the only two large carriers that have shown any real gumption amid the cowardly
name-calling wars in the telephone industry. No amount of court rulings throwing telecom reform into
legal chaos have stopped WorldCom from continuing to build alternative local networks. MCI's spin
doctors have yelled and screamed with the best of them, but to MCI's credit, it finally has given the local
market a run for its money.
The two together, plus WorldCom's acquisition of Brooks Fiber Properties' networks in second-tier cities,
eventually could provide the first national counterweight to the archipelago of monopoly regional Bell
operating companies.
That's in welcome contrast to AT&T's hypocrisy in failing to attack the local market even while swearing
it's trying to (in order to prevent the RBOCs from triggering a rule that allows them to walk into the
long-distance business if no one shows up to compete with them).
But back in the long-distance business, in which you now might expect a WorldCom vs. AT&T duel, there
are troubling questions that actually could leave AT&T with a stronger hand than before.
WorldCom's entire history seems to track exactly what services occupy a share of mind inside CEO
Bernard Ebbers' head. In the early days, WorldCom's predecessor companies sold cheap long distance via
resale. That led Ebbers to discover the power of physical facilities. So he bought and installed switches and
fiber and became a big wholesale provider to many other small carriers. He figured the same held true for
local markets, so he bought MFS Communications, the king of alternate access facilities. Legend has it that
MFS' UUNET subsidiary meant nothing to Ebbers until John Sidgmore explained the Internet to him, so
Ebbers became a big believer in IP.
What's missing? As a network manager, you already know: everything else.
By all accounts, frame relay has been starved for attention within WorldCom, and it has the drooping
market-share figures to show for it. IPX and SNA issues seem to get no hearing in the executive suite. The
company seems unable to throw the switch on a simple announcement that it will bundle Racal frame relay
access devices with its frame relay service, a step everyone else took with other FRAD vendors long ago.
All this while AT&T finally gets its act together on multiprotocol networks, particularly the long-awaited
migration from private lines to frame relay to handle legacy and emerging IP applications.
The price may be stiff, but by offering everything from dual and backup virtual circuits to choices in
bundled and managed services and even applications modeling, AT&T's fast-packet data business is
roaring.
Will Ebbers sit down and listen when MCI's product managers and customers tell him they have multiple
requirements that all must be met at the same time? For their sake and the sake of the merger, let's hope
so.
Rohde is Network World senior editor of Carriers & ISPs. He can be reached at david˜rohde@nww.com. |
