Grant Gross
Senior Writer

WorldCom declines to comment on name change

news
Apr 11, 20032 mins

WSJ reports company plans to adopt MCI moniker

WorldCom has refused to comment on a report in The Wall Street Journal Friday saying the bankrupt U.S. telecommunications carrier is planning to chance its name to MCI.

“We’re declining to comment on speculation,” a WorldCom spokeswoman said Friday.

Meanwhile, often-quoted telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan said the name change would come as no big surprise.  WorldCom acquired MCI Communications in 1998, and Kagan said the name change could help the company distance itself from a fraud scandal revealed in June.

“This was the most widely expected secret ever in the telecom industry,” Kagan said in an e-mail. “After the shock and awe of their fraud and scandal, and after they filed for bankruptcy, and announced their intention to emerge, it’s been almost a foregone conclusion that WorldCom would change its name, and probably change it to MCI. It was never a question of IF to me, it was always a question of WHEN.”

WorldCom needed to put the fraud issue behind it before going forward with a name change, Kagan said. “If they are doing this, it may signal that the bad news is behind them and they can get on with the business of rebuilding,” he added. “It’s a good move. MCI still has a history and a magic with the public and will mean a helluva lot to all the old MCI-ers who never quite felt comfortable with the change to WorldCom anyway.”

The company could change its name as early as next week, when WorldCom files its reorganization plan with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, The Wall Street Journal said. WorldCom hopes to distance itself from its continuing accounting fraud, which could total as much as $11 billion, according to WSJ’s sources.

The revelation of fraud in June helped push WorldCom into the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy court proceedings in U.S. corporate history.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

More from this author