This whole subject makes me sick. I worked at MCI before WorldCom came in and bought the company. MCI although they too had their share of problems, was a good company to work for.
The thing that pisses me off the most is that even though I don't work there anymore, our 401k's are shit, I have seen good people get let go from the company while the bad ones keep their jobs and nothing ever happens to the companies. Bernie Ebbers should have been asked to step down years ago and go back to coaching girls high-school basketball. Then he takes the 5th in the hearing.
It makes me sick to see the executives of these companies drive them into the ground while they live off their golden parachutes. The CEO of Global Crossing is building a 100million dollar house while the company is going under.
There are more companies like this. I had the unfortunate pleasure of also working for Broadwing communications. This is another company that you will see either get bought out , or go under. The management chain I was under was the worst in telcom history (guess where they came from, hmmm Global Crossing?). These people cared nothing about their employees and cared even less about their customers. Sure there are good and bad at every organization, but what happened to "the customer is always right".
What happened to old time business ethics and CEO's like Sam Walton, who could run a business and still cared about the people.
As far as UU NET and the Internet backbone, don't worry about that. This will be picked up even if the government takes it over (worst case scenario). However, the one thing I do see is that all these companies are losing money and are having financial problems. Who is going to buy all these telcoms? If a couple people do buy these telcoms, we are headed right back to a huge monopoly in that industry. I think what you are most likely to see is the companies who show they cooked their books will suffer greatly while others (even if they did fudge their numbers) will sit back quietly ask for money from the government to help bail out these other companies and pick them up for pennies on the dollar.
If any of you big time webmasters out there have some extra cash I hear WorldCom will take a nickel per share
You might be the next CEO of WorldCom ... hahaha
BTW: If you have any spare cash lying around I suggest you buy some LVL3 stock. I bet they will be looking at picking up some of these sinking telcoms.
playa: I am one that had over 40,000 shares of WorldCom stock. Most were options, and the rest were purchased. I was a Sr. Manager with the organization for a while and received most of the options. Those options were worth about 1.2 million dollars and I saw them drop to $9 (per share) before I left, which was well below strike price. Even with splits and everything else, my options were worth shit, and these were supposed to be an incentive for people to stay on board. My WorldCom 401k is now worth only about $500 (no options), good thing I made other investments or I would be really screwed.
-AJ