Wednesday, October 17, 2007

And Then It Just Keeled Over and Died

This MCI Worldcom phone booth was found laying dead on the sidewalk in Downtown Brooklyn.

According to Wikipedia, MCI Communications was a company that was instrumental in the breakup of the AT&T monopoly, and ushered in the competitive long distance telephone industry.

It grew to be the second largest long-distance provider in the U.S. In 1998 it became MCI WorldCom, then WorldCom. WorldCom's "financial scandals and bankruptcy" led that company to change its name in 2003 to MCI. The MCI name disappeared in January 2006 after the company was bought by Verizon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Verizon was formed as a result of the breakup of the AT&T monopoly. It was originally called Bell Atlantic and owned 7 of the "baby Bells". It merged with NYNYEX and then GTE and changed it's name to Verizon in 2000.

Anonymous said...

How many "Baby Bells" were there?