Users back WorldCom – to a degree

Earlier this week, we talked about a recently released study by Merrill Lynch, which interviewed 75 CTOs about their telecom spending plans for 2003. Today, we’ll look at the respondents’ views on WorldCom.

While the majority of respondents said that AT&T was their primary or secondary carrier, 45.3% reported that they do use some WorldCom services.

Despite WorldCom’s repeated battering since June of last year from fraud revelations, to bankruptcy, to hiring a new CEO, only 29.7% of the CTOs surveyed who use WorldCom said the carrier’s financial position would prevent them from renewing their contracts when the time comes. Happily for WorldCom, a full 56.8% said that WorldCom’s financial position would not impact their decision to renew.

But of those who plan to renew their contract with WorldCom, 64.9% said the terms would most certainly be different. Some of those changes would likely include one to two year contracts as opposed to three to five year deals and would include more ways of getting out of the agreement.

While it sounds like a good portion of users are willing to give WorldCom a far shake 70.3% of CTOs surveyed said they are seeking alternative service providers.

Merrill Lynch also asked CTOs if they had noticed any “material change” with WorldCom’s service quality or service delivery recently. The majority of users (62.2%) said they had not noticed degradation in service, but 35.1% said they had.

Unfortunately, there were no additional questions or responses that talked about the specific service issues that customers have experienced. It would be interesting to note where users are noticing changes.

If you are currently a WorldCom customer and have noticed changes in customer service, network reliability or even the availability of your sales representative, please drop us a line. We’d be interested in hearing about positive or negative changes.