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Verizon To Acquire MCI For $6.7 Billion
An anonymous reader submits "Even after a last minute offer from Qwest Communications, MCI board members accepted a less lucrative offer from Verizon to be bought for $6.7 billion in cash, stock and dividends. The acquisition comes after Nextel Communications and Sprint Corp. partnered up in a $35 billion deal and SBC Communications Inc. and AT&T Corp. announced a $16 billion merger plan. So, what's next for the telecom industry?"
I for one am not surprised. This is what happens when you let the corporations have free reigns. Just a few more mergers like this and you're not going to have any choice whatsoever in telecommunications. That's why we need more regulation in the interest of consumers: so we don't have to go back to the days of "we're the phone company, we don't have to care". I think it's time to abolish corporations too, while we're at it.
and half of these companies' products still don't work 50% of the time. I call this the "Gates Epidemic"; Companies that make fortunes off of products that only have to work sometimes.
and no, that is not a typo
What makes you think there is any choice in the US today?
Same crappy service. Same crappy phones.
All the good cell phone technology is OUTSIDE the US.
The trial of former WorldCom Inc. CEO Bernard Ebbers was unexpectedly suspended on Monday, delaying the much anticipated cross-examination of the prosecution's star witness, Scott Sullivan.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones announced the delay until Wednesday as prosecutors wrapped up their questioning of Sullivan after his four days on the witness stand. She gave no reason for the suspension.
Lawyers for Ebbers are expected to fiercely challenge Sullivan's credibility, possibly questioning the company's former finance chief on everything from drug use to marital infidelity to his cooperation agreement with the government.
Sullivan pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and conspiracy related to the $11 billion accounting scandal that eventually drove WorldCom into bankruptcy. After filing the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in history in 2002, the company emerged last year as the renamed MCI.
Earlier Monday, Verizon Communications Inc. said it would buy MCI in a deal worth $6.75 billion.
Sullivan has admitted during his testimony to his role in cooking WorldCom's books. But he has told jurors that Ebbers, his boss, knew about the accounting tricks that pumped up revenue and disguised costs.
So far, the testimony has been the strongest piece of evidence for prosecutors trying to prove that Ebbers orchestrated the fraud in hopes of propping up the company's stock price.
Ebbers, prosecutors charge, feared any big drops in the share price because he had most of his personal wealth tied up in the stock -- and had used it to back some $400 million in loans.
Before Monday's delay, the government played a videotape of an interview with Ebbers in which he describes his stock holdings in WorldCom as "the dearest and most precious thing to me" aside from his family.
In the same 2002 interview, Ebbers denies any accounting irregularities and says he would share "any amount of information that shareholders ask us for."
Later that year, investigators uncovered the sweeping accounting fraud, and eventually brought charges against six senior WorldCom executives. Aside from Ebbers, they have all pleaded guilty in the case.
Ebbers faces up to 85 years in prison if convicted.