By David Rohde
Network World, 4/20/98

To what do you attribute your company's success?
The hard work of our employees and the strong relationships with our customers. We've also made strategic investments targeting the industry's biggest growth opportunities and worked effectively to integrate new capabilities that benefit our customers.
We have one of the world's most advanced communications platforms, [which is] capable of supporting the exploding demand for Internet, data and IT solutions. And we can deliver these solutions on an end-to-end basis entirely over our own network, ensuring the quality of service our customers demand.

What are the most important attributes that will help guarantee future success?
Customer service and low costs. No market is moving faster or is as unpredictable as the communications industry today. While you've got to be decisive and opportunistic with respect to acquisitions, your employees have to stay focused on the day-to-day business.

What, if anything, would customers most like to see change at your company?
Our customers would like us to be able to provide local service. MCI WorldCom will offer local service over its own networks in more than 100 markets, putting us within reach of 40 million consumers and 70% of business customers. But local competition has been delayed by the local monopolies that continue to postpone the benefits of competition for many customers.

How much do the contentious industry politics affect your network investment strategies?
There's no doubt the local monopolies have stalled the arrival of wide-scale competition. We can't depend on those carriers to provide access to their network, and that's why we feel so good about our acquisitions of MFS, Brooks and our pending merger with MCI.

You run a pretty lean ship. How do you keep it that way?
In an increasingly competitive industry, cost structure will become an important differentiator among competitors. WorldCom for years has led the industry with the lowest [selling, general and administrative expenses] as a percent of revenue and the highest revenue per employee. We achieve that by focusing on cost control.

In your dealings with customers, what is their top network concern?
The burden of dealing with multiple vendors. Often they're dealing with equipment vendors, a local service provider, a long-distance provider and a systems integrator. It doesn't need to be this cumbersome, and we are working hard to be a single source for more of our customers.

What advice would you give chief information officers and telecommunications managers trying to budget for ever-increasing bandwidth needs?
Budgeting for bandwidth is less of a challenge than finding a partner that can match bandwidth with flexibility in terms of supporting advanced applications. My advice is to find a company that can provide the entire package: end-to-end high-speed transport, systems and network management, and solutions that are designed to make your business more productive.

How do you plan for shifts in technology? How can you make sure you don't invest in passing fads while still building to meet ever-growing demand?
There aren't many certainties when it comes to technology, but we know data traffic will soon surpass voice traffic and our customers will demand ever-increasing capacity to support Internet and other data applications. We're building to meet this demand, and we don't spend too much time worrying about changes in technology since we're not locked into any single technology. Our network is flexible and can be customized for customers' specific needs.

How do you find and keep qualified personnel in today's labor market?
This has become one of the biggest challenges in our industry. We're still a relatively small company with strong prospects for considerable growth. That's cause for a lot of excitement, and that's what keeps people around. The performance of our stock is also part of the excitement at WorldCom, and we make sure that all employees at every level have a stake in the company.

What is your view of convergence? Will voice and data ride side by side, and if so, when?
To an extent, they already do. We've seen some interesting services that let travelers access their voice mail over the Web. And of course, most consumers use the voice network to access the Internet. But only competition will create the investment required to support the kind of end-to-end high-bandwidth access that will support voice and data applications on a single line. We plan to spend more than $5 billion in 1999 to build on our fiber-optic network. This kind of continued investment will drive the economics of the industry. n