Serge --
Duncan Stewart has often been quoted with negative comments re: NN. If he's been a friend, it's way before I started following.
This just came up on the Financial Times, leading me to wonder who'll be doing the DWDM:
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WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 7 1998 Americas
MCI: Telecoms group to spend $1bn
By Alan Cane
MCI WorldCom, the US-based telecommunications group, intends to spend about $1bn (£500m) this year developing its network outside North America.
It expects to spend about $800m in Europe on doubling the size of its optical fibre network to provide national coverage in the UK, France and Germany. The network should expand to 7,150km from its present 3,200km.
As the company grows it plans to increase its 2,000 European employees by about 1,000, some 400-600 of whom will be employed in the UK.
In the UK, the company is building a 2,200km network in the form of three "self-healing" rings in the south, midlands and north. The northern ring, the last to be completed, will be in service by the end of 1999.
The dark fibre optical cabling has been acquired from Racal Telecom in a transaction valued at £20m. The deal gives WorldCom rights of use to the cabling for the next 25 years. Dark fibre is cable that has been installed but which is not carrying telecoms traffic.
MCI WorldCom is building five new public exchanges in Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham with two installed in Reading. John Sidgmore, the company's chief operations officer, said there was huge demand for transmission capacity: "This is the time for us to build out networking assets as fast as possible." He argued that owning a network from end to end meant that costs could be cut, quality maintained and performance monitored.
MCI WorldCom has been growing rapidly by acquisition. It has made some 68 purchases in four years, of which the largest is MCI, at one stage the second largest long distance operator in the US.
The new European network will connect some 20 cities providing customers with access to national and international high speed private circuits and data services.>>>> |
