MCI Inc.

MCI, Inc. (formerly WorldCom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed for bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.

WorldCom was originally headquartered in Clinton, Mississippi, before moving to Ashburn, Virginia, when it changed its name to MCI.

In 1983, in a coffee shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Bernard Ebbers and three other investors formed Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. based in Jackson, Mississippi, and in 1985, Ebbers was named chief executive officer.

The company acquired more than 60 telecommunications firms, and in 1995, it changed its name to WorldCom.

In 1989, it merged with Advantage Companies Inc. In 1995, it was renamed LDDS WorldCom and moved to Clinton, Mississippi.

The company grew rapidly in the 1990s through mergers and acquisitions.

WorldCom's first major acquisition was in 1992. It outbid larger rivals Sprint Corporation and AT&T to secure the $720 million acquisition of Advanced Telecommunications Corporation. The deal made WorldCom a substantially larger player in the telecoms market.

Other acquisitions followed: Metromedia Communication Corp. and Resurgens Communications Group (1993), IDB Communications Group, Inc (1994), Williams Technology Group, Inc. (1995), and MFS Communications Company (1996)—the last of which brought along MFS' newly acquired UUNET Technologies, Inc.