Bert Roberts may sit at the head of the table as board chairman, but make no mistake: MCI WorldCom remains Bernie Ebbers' company, and that should tell you a lot about what the industry can expect going forward.
It's denying it now, but the company will look seriously at selling off its residential voice customers. WorldCom is focused on business services, and a sale of the consumer business could make all the battling parties happy. GTE or BT could get a part of MCI after all. WorldCom would get money from the sale to help refill its coffers and make up for the inflated purchase price of MCI.
WorldCom will and should sell off MCI Systemhouse as well. WorldCom really needs a WAN integration and outsourcing arm, but Systemhouse isn't it and never will be. It's a classic glass-house data center operator.
In short, WorldCom's focus will remain on providing IP and voice services. The good news here is that with one company controlling a large portion of the Internet backbone, we could see much faster implementation of quality-of-service and tiered pricing structures. That's needed for the Internet to support next-generation electronic business applications.
But don't expect innovation in other areas. We haven't seen it up to now, even though WorldCom is the only company with substantial local and interexchange facilities. It could make life difficult for AT&T, Sprint and the regional Bell operating companies, but instead it'll continue to provide "me-too" fare.
It will take a lot of time to integrate the companies' systems, networks, processes and people. WorldCom still has to finish integrating MFS and get moving on CompuServe and Brooks Fiber, plus any other company it buys over the next few months.
Customers will suffer in the short term. Service and support will take a back seat to internal integration and corporate money-making. The silver lining? Almost all of the components of MCI WorldCom, except UUNET, position the firm's services almost entirely around low price. It will give AT&T and Sprint a run for their money and bargain shoppers will benefit.
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