From poor customer service to lawsuits, the sale of MCI's Internet business to Cable & Wireless has to be considered one of the more troublesome business deals of the past 24 months.
The latest snafu comes courtesy of MCI WorldCom. When Cable & Wireless bought MCI's Internet business, the two companies made another deal: all MCI frame relay customers that connect to the MCI Internet backbone were to be moved to MCI WorldCom's UUNET network. But MCI WorldCom has not lived up to its end of the deal.
Today, Cable & Wireless has gateways between its Internet network and MCI WorldCom's frame relay network. These gateways let legacy MCI frame customers access Cable & Wireless' network using dedicated permanent virtual circuits (PVC). But Cable & Wireless could have turned off those gateways June 1, 1999 according to a source close to MCI WorldCom. A Cable & Wireless spokeswoman also confirmed the agreed-upon deadline.
But Cable & Wireless officials never received a detailed schedule from MCI to accomplish this, she says. So instead of just turning off the gateways and leaving MCI frame customers in the lurch, the service provider decided to leave the circuits on.
Over Memorial Day weekend "one of our guys received a call [from an MCI frame relay user] saying, 'Don't turn us down. We're not prepared to have this happen,' " the Cable & Wireless spokeswoman says.
While MCI WorldCom sorts out its frame relay customer migration plan, Cable & Wireless' lawsuit against the service provider is moving ahead.
In late March, Cable & Wireless filed suit against MCI claiming that MCI did forward pertinent customer information or supply enough staff to support the Internet business that MCI sold off.
And Cable & Wireless is still working on transition issues of its own. In the midst of customer complaints about poor Internet service, Cable & Wireless went on a hiring spree earlier this year.
But then the service provider sent another blow to its dial-up Internet access customers in May by announcing that it plans to sell this part of its business to Prodigy for $50 million to $75 million. o
RELATED LINKS
Did Cable & Wireless get the shaft?
A look at the issues behind C&W's lawsuit against MCI. Network World Fusion, 4/5/99.
