Sidgmore: You ain't seen nothing yet

MCI WorldCom COO says the Internet still has to face multimedia apps.

By Sandra Gittlen
Network World Fusion, 01/29/99

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Giving his rote stump speech, John Sidgmore told ComNet attendees yesterday the industry is in for even more growth than it has endured in the past year.

In a keynote address, the MCI WorldCom chief operating officer said that the onslaught of multimedia-rich applications would drive Internet growth off the charts.

Add to that the proliferation of information appliances and other small Internet-attached devices and keeping up with bandwidth becomes a daunting task.

"For the first time, the world has figured out that the Internet is the future," Sidgmore said. "We're about to see the biggest explosion of new technology in history."

But Sidgmore warned that all of this growth and change is going to cost money.

"The world believes that Internet access should be cheap - whatever [AOL President] Steve [Case] says it should be," he said. "But long-haul access is expensive."

"And Bill Gates says bandwidth should be free," he said. "Well, we believe software should be free."

In fact, MCI WorldCom has been on a tremendous shopping spree with 68 acquisitions in the past year and the build-out of an undersea network.

"We wanted to be able to offer long-distance in a seamless bill," he said. "We wanted to be able to offer end-to-end systems without hand-off. When you own your own facilities, you can guarantee quality and can control pace of services without negotiating with telephone companies."

But as quick as he pointed out that the company has bought up everything it needs to own the network end to end, he chastised the regional Bell operating companies for selling wires and services.

They ought to split their businesses to have half deal with wire sales and the other half deal with services, he said.