I've tried parsing the original press release http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/0 5-28-1998/0000666960&EDATE= . Here's what I come up with. Think of the services being provided as existing in three chunks: raw transport, wholesale, and retail. Under this deal, 1) MCI will continue to provide raw transport (think of it as Layer 1 stuff) for the traffic associated with its Internet wholesale ("backbone") services, at least for now. 2) C&W will take over (own) the routers, the connection agreements, and the service agreements for providing wholesale services to ISPs. Looks like this applies worldwide. C&W will be a customer of MCI for raw transport. 3) MCI will continue to own the service agreements and be the service provider to end users (to corporate customers for access and/or Web hosting, plus dial-up internetMCI consumers.) For some period (they say 2 years), MCI will be a customer of C&W for backbone services. MCI and C&W bravely say in their press release that this deal "should clear the way for the swift approval of the MCI WorldCom merger." We'll see. I expect that the EC will require that C&W have an explicit "out" on the transport piece (i.e. be able to take in-house or contract with others for the big transport pipes as it chooses.) Pete ______________________________________________________________________ Peter J. Farmer E-mail: pfarmer@strategies-u.com Strategies Unlimited Voice: +1 650 941 3438 201 San Antonio Circle, Suite 205 Fax: +1 650 941 5120 Mountain View, CA 94040 WWW: http://www.strategies-u.com