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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (3052)	7/28/1998 5:16:00 AM
From: ANANT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11568

AW and all: WSJ article on: AT&T-BT Alliance Faces Bevy of Rivals, Including Some New Players to the Scene interactive.wsj.com Excerpts: The BT-AT&T venture will also battle with more conventional challengers such as WorldCom Inc., which last week unveiled a roughly 2,000-mile network linking several European cities. Access to its own network means that WorldCom won't have to pay hefty fees to various distributors- savings it can pass on to multinationals. BT and AT&T have a similar plan. "What didn't work in the other alliances, we've corrected that," said Sir Peter Bonfield, BT's CEO at the news conference on Sunday, when the deal with AT&T was announced. John D. Zeglis, president of AT&T, added: The AT&T-BT alliance "has more scope and ambition than either of us had in our previous alliances. The bar has been raised permanently."

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (3052)	7/28/1998 7:50:00 AM
From: Teddy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11568

Article from today's SmartMoney smartmoney.com (it might be a pay site, free to Wall Street Urinal subscribers) IS THE AT&T-BT DEAL BAD FOR WORLDCOM? AT&T (T) and British Telecommunications (BTY) just picked up the pace in the international telecommunications race. The U.S.'s largest phone carrier and Britain's largest telecommunications concern announced Sunday that they will join forces in a $10 billion venture to provide multinational corporations with voice and data services. The announcement comes just one week after WorldCom (WCOM) unveiled a high-capacity, pan-European network rigged to carry voice, data and video across borders with much greater efficiency and speed than older phone lines. Not only does that network connect to 4,000 office buildings in Europe, but it also provides a transAtlantic link to 27,000 corporate sites in the U.S. Market reaction to Sunday's deal suggests that the AT&T and BT alliance might be stealing WorldCom's thunder. At midday Monday, British Telecom's ADRs were up 6% to 146 while T sat relatively unchanged at around 60. WorldCom, on the other hand, had shed as much as 5.2% before rallying to close at 55 1/16. Despite the dip, WorldCom bulls are not cowering at the sight of AT&T stepping into the international market. "WorldCom is much further ahead in terms of their international strategy," says Cynthia Houlton of Utendahl Capital. Indeed, WorldCom, a member of SmartMoney's Net Values portfolio, remains well positioned to grab handfuls of market share in Europe, says CIBC Oppenheimer's Harry Blount. The telecom analyst likens WorldCom to a spurting sapling in comparison to the mature oaks, AT&T and BT. That is especially true in BT's backyard. International revenue accounted for 11.5% of WorldCom's total revenue last quarter -- $299 million out of $2.61 billion. But that part of WorldCom's business is growing fast: International revenue was up 73% over last year while total revenue increased 45%. Says Blount: "WorldCom is still very much the growth company." Blount admits that AT&T's pursuit of multinational corporations might hurt WorldCom "at the margins," but that doesn't affect his bullish position on the company. "The average WorldCom investor isn't even going to see [the impact]," he says. Others don't think WorldCom will be damaged at all. Joe Noel of Hambrecht & Quist, for one, is not impressed by Ma Bell's foray into Europe. "I think it is an act of desperation for a company that's really taken its eye off of the ball," he says. Conversely, Noel applauds WorldCom's recent development efforts. "WorldCom is exceptionally well-placed in Europe," he says. "It's the only company that has a transcontinental fiber-optic capacity." While AT&T-BT works to close WorldCom's infrastructure lead abroad -- the alliance will also lack local loop assets in Europe -- other players will continue to stream into the international telecom market. "I think you're going to see announcements from all the major players trying to compete," says David Smith, vice president at Technology Futures, a telecommunications research outfit. Of particular interest, Smith says, will be the race to offer Internet Protocol (or IP) telephony abroad. That technology, which essentially involves turning telephone calls into packets of data to be sent over the Net, is widely considered to be the future of voice transmission. And Smith believes that AT&T's pending merger with cable giant TCI (TCOMA), coupled with its alliance with BT, should jump-start its European efforts in that market. "A couple more agreements like this gives them pretty good pop in Internet telephony," he says. But WorldCom is already a leader in transmitting data over the Internet -- its UUNet division is the largest Internet service provider in the world. And despite the specter of AT&T's and BT's tremendous brand power, WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers has quickly established his company as a heavyweight in the communications market. Add MCI to the WorldCom stable, and the company looks even tougher. Says Houlton, "In terms of positioning and time-to-market issues, I think WorldCom-MCI is much better positioned [internationally] than AT&T-BT." In other words, don't look for WorldCom's stock to keep sinking.