1997- MCI was under a bid to be purchased by British Telecommunications. Worldcom came in and outbid BT to snag up the company. What made this the coup de grace is it would make Worldcom the #2 telecom provider, under AT&T. The $37 Billion dollar merger would finalize on November 10th. Then, September 1998 – MCI Worldcom would officially launch. This all crumbled in 2002 when Worldcom filed for bankruptcy.

 I was an employee of Worldcom and had been since its original namesake LDDS. At the time we were awestruck.

-Bill Bartholomew

This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 1

• Happy Eyebrow Day in honor of Groucho Marx. He was born in 1890
• Google sued over GMail in Germany
• Microsoft Jellyfish
• The Apple/IBM alliance

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Tagged as: amp, apple, apple ibm, bankruptcy, british telecommunications, coup de grace, dollar merger, eyebrow, Germany, gmail, Google, groucho marx, ibm alliance, jellyfish, mci communications, mci worldcom, Microsoft, technology history, telecom provider