WorldCom an American telecommunications subsidiary of Verizon Communications that is headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia. The corporation was originally formed as a result of the merger of WorldCom and MCI Communications.
For a time, WorldCom was the United States's second largest long distance phone company (after AT&T). WorldCom grew largely by aggressively acquiring other telecommunications companies, most notably MCI Communications. It also owned the Tier 1 ISP UUNET, a major part of the Internet backbone. It was headquartered in Clinton, Mississippi, before being moved to Virginia.
Corporate founding
The company began as Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. (LDDS) in 1983, based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In 1985 LDDS selected Bernard Ebbers to be its CEO. The company went public in 1989 through a merger with Advantage Companies Inc. The company name was changed to LDDS WorldCom in 1995, and later just WorldCom.
The company’s growth under WorldCom was fueled primarily through acquisitions during the 1990s and reached its apex with the acquisition of MCI in 1998. Among the companies that were bought or merged with WorldCom were Advanced Communications Corp. (1992), Metromedia Communication Corp. (1993), Resurgens Communications Group(1993), IDB Communications Group, Inc (1994), Williams Technology Group, Inc. (1995), and MFS Communications Company (1996). The acquisition of MFS included UUNET Technologies, Inc., which had been acquired by MFS shortly before the merger with WorldCom. In February 1998, a complex transaction saw WorldCom purchase online pioneer CompuServe from its parent company H&R Block. WorldCom then retained the CompuServe Network Services Division, sold its online service to America Online, and received AOL's network division, ANS. The acquisition of Digex (DIGX) in June 2001 was also complex; Worldcom acquired Digex's corporate