MCIWorldcom and Vulcun invest in Metricom
from the wireless-world dept
MCIWordcom is investing in Metricom, makers of the Ricochet wireless modem and service. At the same time Vulcun Ventures (Paul Allen’s venture outfit) is increasing their stake. MCIWorldcom has been consistantly hounded for being the the only major telco without a wireless operation. This is an interesting move in that direction but since they are getting into the wireless data business over the voice business.
I hope the new investments can help Metricom get closer to national coverage. Its a great service if you live in Seattle, SF Bay Area or Washington DC. They are the only firm I know of who offer 28.8K wirelss IP at a reasonable rate. If it was as national as other wireless players (260 major business cities) they would have a killer service.
Just checked the WSJ.com(paid subscription needed) coverage of this story to learn that MCIWorldcom plans to roll out the service to 46 cities nationwide at speeds of upto 128k in mid-2000. Wow!
Comments on “MCIWorldcom and Vulcun invest in Metricom”
The engineers who destroyed mci worldcom
As long as they do not have the Brian Ladage and Lena Lowe team doing switch planning and engineering they will be just fine.
Re: The engineers who destroyed mci worldcom
Managers of switch planning put the identical frame relay problem that AT&T had into the MCI Worldcom network inside of the same year.
Was that a just dumb luck or was it done on purpose. People like Ladage and Lowe could be key to finding how who could purposefully do something like this and topple MCI Worldcom.
Switch Engineer Planning managers who are causing fortune 500 companies to fail are not going to help a company do just fine.
Worldcom Switch Planning Managers Role in downfall
There is a team of switch planning managers at a telecom firm such as an MCI Worldcom. Their job is to plan and oversee testing of new additions or changes to the network hardware and software. Each annual quarter new features or changes are made to meet marketing projections and adapt the network to generate what is projected to and by Wall Street. Worldcom already had sold a lot of UUNet. Frame Relay was very important in meeting projections. A manager or these managers dropped the ball which made business customers take data elsewhere after they botched the Frame Relay equipment consolidation of former MCI with Worldcom. Big Brass was forced to cover up the losses in order to not spook Wall Street. The managers could not ever back out of their leadership. Ones like Lowe and LaDage had no fall back plan. Even though AT&T had same problems, Worldcom, with the same equipment vendors, took longer to fix things. Business customers not only took data business, they also took lucrative business telephone services and went elsewhere. Yes, these engineering managers really did ( or someone in similar position) cause the downfall of MCI Worldcom. The stock was overstated, but there was a reason and that reason on a timeline directly correlates to the SWITCH PLANNING AND ENGINEERING MANAGERS AND DIRECTORS!! People are in prison because of them!!!
Send More Info on Why Worldcom Fell (Good MoviePlot)
This is interesting. Managers plan network consolidation of MCI and Worldcom, engineers carry out plan. Managers incompetent. Merger of networks fails and there is no fallback plan to back out of the nationwide integration. What goofballs!!! I understand Lowe was a woman who liked her engineers laying down. She gets away scott free!!! Others go to prison because of her
MCI Worldcom Switch Planning Mgrs of the year 2000
if a network goes down because of engineering plans implemented by engineering managers then yes, it can be attributed to loss of customers due to a prolonged outage. HOw many customers left after the outage? How long was the outage? I think it was several weeks. That can cause a big loss in customer base. That can lead to a drop in quarterly revenue. Is that the case?