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Verizon To Acquire MCI For $6.7 Billion

Posted by timothy on from the shifting-sands-of-time dept.

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?"

5 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Don't forget Canada too. by DJStealth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In Canada we had the following:

    Telus purchased Clearnet
    Rogers & Shaw swap regions so they each have cable monopoly in their region.
    Rogers purchased Fido

  2. Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    * SBC owns AT&T
    * Verizon owns MCI

    After the baby bells were broken up, we had this very nice period where briefly, though you may not have had a choice of local phone providers, you had a real and serious choice of long-distance phone providers. Anyone else suspect this era is about to end? I think we're about to quickly go to the point where your regional local-phone monopoly quickly becomes a regional long-distance phone monopoly.

    Who wants to take bets on how many SBC customers will be using MCI in five years, or how many Verizon customers will be using AT&T?

  3. What's next? by Moryath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After two more rounds of mergers, we'll have two companies left in each area. Each with strict but unwritten agreements not to compete in each others' areas. It's the same way Comcast/Time Warner do business in the Cable TV industry right now, anyways.

  4. Re:MCI... by AFCArchvile · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and the same MCI that is the number 1 spammer according to the Spamhaus charts. Spamhaus also put out this article charging that MCI profits from spam. Verizon's getting all that.

    --
    "Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
  5. Why this matters for SPAM... by jaylee7877 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    MCI is currently the largest ISP allowing (and some consider supporting) spammers to use their bandwidth. Verizon is currently one of the most aggressive anti-spam ISPs. Some have argued they've gone to far blocking legit messages often but most of their users are happy about the spam control. How these two will mesh may be a very interesting chapter in the war on Spam.