Is MCI Problem Due To Y2K Upgrade? PROBABLY.

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WHY ISN'T ANYONE REPORTING THIS----DRUDGE WHERE ARE YOU?

The remaining mission-critical systems, and non-mission critical systems, are targeted for compliance by June 30, 1999, with full deployment of the remediated solutions throughout the Company's network targeted for completion by September 30, 1999.

http://biz.yahoo.com/e/l/w/wcom.html May 17, 1999 MCI WORLDCOM INC (WCOM) Quarterly Report (SEC form 10-Q)

YEAR 2000 READINESS DISCLOSURE

Due to extensive use of computer technology, both MCI and WorldCom began developing strategic plans in 1996 to address their respective year 2000 issues. Since the MCI Merger, the Company has consolidated these strategies into a single program. The Company's year 2000 compliance plan is an ongoing program in which remediation strategies are being implemented by the Company's business organizations to address noncompliant computer and network systems and technology. The Company has a central project management organization that has overall responsibility for coordinating the implementation of this strategy.

The remediation strategies followed by the Company's business organizations generally involve a sequence of steps that include (i) identifying computer hardware, software and network components and equipment potentially impacted by year 2000 problems; (ii) analyzing the date sensitivity of those elements; (iii) developing plans for remediation where necessary; (iv) converting non-compliant code or equipment (or, in some cases, replacing or decommissioning systems); (v) testing; and (vi) deploying and monitoring remediation solutions. These steps will vary to meet the particular needs of a business organization and, in some cases, will overlap. Testing, for example, may be performed at several stages of the remediation process.

The Company has substantially completed its efforts to identify and assess year 2000 computer issues, and its business organizations are in the process of developing remediation plans, converting noncompliant code or equipment, and replacing or decommissioning systems, and testing. The Company achieved year 2000 compliance for the majority of its mission-critical systems, including network and customer interfacing systems, on or before March 31, 1999. The remaining mission-critical systems, and non-mission critical systems, are targeted for compliance by June 30, 1999, with full deployment of the remediated solutions throughout the Company's network targeted for completion by September 30, 1999.

The Company is continuing to develop new systems and services that are expected to be implemented as year 2000 compliant throughout the year. Selected international, enhanced service platform systems and internal security/scheduling/mail systems are also expected to be implemented as year 2000 compliant in the third and fourth quarters of 1999.

As part of its year 2000 plan, the Company is seeking confirmation from its domestic and foreign interconnecting carriers (collectively, the "Interconnecting Carriers") and major communications equipment vendors (the "Primary Vendors") that they are developing and implementing plans to become year 2000 compliant. The Company has contacted these carriers and vendors, and will continue to do so, but has not yet received enough information from certain domestic and foreign carriers to assess their year 2000 readiness. The Company has received information from its Primary Vendors regarding their year 2000 readiness. This information indicates the Primary Vendors have documented plans to become year 2000 compliant. Like all major telecommunication carriers, the Company's ability to provide service is dependent on its Interconnecting Carriers and Primary Vendors.

The Company is participating in industry efforts to test interoperability of networks for industry segments as well as multiple carriers. The ATIS and Network Reliability and Interoperability Council ("NRIC") testing are examples of this effort to assess the readiness of Interconnecting Carriers for both data and voice services.

The Company has completed contingency plans to address potential year 2000 related business interruptions that may occur on January 1, 2000 or thereafter. Additional detailed documentation will be completed before the end of the second quarter, 1999. The Company anticipates that these contingency plans will primarily address potential year 2000 problems due to failures to remediate major systems successfully, or potential failure of the Company's Interconnecting Carriers' and Primary Vendors' year 2000 compliance efforts. The Company is incorporating many of the recommendations of the NRIC into the contingency planning process. The Company plans to complete preparation and implementation of its contingency plans by December 31, 1999. Failure to meet this target could materially impact the Company's operations.

To achieve its year 2000 compliance plan, the Company is utilizing both internal and external resources to identify, correct or reprogram, and test its systems for year 2000 compliance. The Company expects to incur internal labor as well as consulting and other expenses related to infrastructure and facilities enhancements necessary to prepare its systems for the year 2000. The Company's use of internal resources to achieve its year 2000 compliance plan has not had a material adverse effect on its ability to develop new products and services or to maintain and upgrade, if necessary, its existing products and services.

The year 2000 costs incurred by MCI and WorldCom over the past five quarters were approximately $260 million. This level of expenditures is consistent with the planned expenditures for the related periods. The Company expects to incur approximately $290 million in costs during the remainder of 1999 to support its year 2000 compliance initiatives. The costs of the Company's year 2000 remediation efforts are based upon management's best estimates, which require assumptions about future events, availability of resources and personnel, third-party remediation actions, and other factors. There are no assurances that these estimates will be accurate, and actual amounts may differ materially based on a number of factors, including the availability and cost of resources to undertake remediation activities and the scope and nature of the work required to complete remediation.

The Company is unable to determine at this time whether the consequences of year 2000 failures will have a material impact on the Company's results of operations, liquidity or financial condition due to the general uncertainty inherent in the year 2000 problem, resulting in part from the uncertainty of the year 2000 readiness of its Interconnecting Carriers and Primary Vendors, and other suppliers, as well as uncertainties related to the Company's ongoing remediation program. The Company's year 2000 compliance plan is expected to reduce significantly the Company's level of uncertainty about the year 2000 problem and, in particular, about the year 2000 compliance and readiness of its Interconnecting Carriers and Primary Vendors. The Company believes that, with the implementation of new business systems, its Interconnecting Carriers and Primary Vendors year 2000 readiness, and completion of the year 2000 compliance plan as scheduled, it will maintain normal operations.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), August 13, 1999

Answers

MCI's stock went up today. very interesting. I wonder if this is what the market manipulators are going to do? Prop up the markets and help hide the fact that there are problems and at the same time keep y2k from trigering a market sell off. Maybe there is another reason the stock went up today. Anyone out there know of anything?

-- Gambler (scotanna@arosnet.com), August 13, 1999.

Booga, booga. Another conspiracy. Those NWO folks are once again manipulating the agenda. First they say they are remediating their systems. You do not believe. When they do make said systems compliant you shout, "Where is Drudge?"

No wonder everyone laughs at tinfoils...

-- Y2K Pro (y2kpro1@hotmail.com), August 13, 1999.


Gordon, All journalists are behaving as though they will be beat with a baseball bat and left to die in the Nevada desert if they were to actually I-N-V-E-S-T-G-A-T-E the factual basis of a compliance claim. I guess the potential downfall of a fractional reserve banking system just isn't sexy enough to bother debunking.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), August 13, 1999.

"MCI's stock went up today. very interesting."

I don't know much about the market, but from what I've been seeing and hearing about the "day traders" running this wild and frantic market, I wouldn't be surprised if those same day traders all bought "on dips" MCI stocks in a feeding frenzy. I watched them at work in a news documentary program, how they make or lose thousands of $$$ in seconds/minutes with trigger fingers watching stock tics go up and down their screens.

-- Chris (%$^&^@pond.com), August 13, 1999.


I know this doesn't have anything to do with this thread but I'm on the way out the door and don't have time to hunt a better spot. Just got off ICQ with a friend who works as a foreman for Trinity Industries in Longview Tx. Trinity has been building railcars for decades, all of a sudden they get the word that theya re retooling to build giant wind turbine towers by the first of the year and halting production of railcars. I think this pretty well speaks for itself if you use a little logic and read between the lines.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), August 13, 1999.


On a day when the DJIA goes up 184, the NASDAQ composite 88 and the S&P 500 29, it would be odd if MCI Worldcom did not go up.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), August 13, 1999.


Gambler,

<MCI's stock went up today. very interesting. I wonder if this is what the market manipulators are going to do?>

Yep. Pure, blatant market manipulation. They're "churning" stocks.

MOT [Motorola] closed up 5-1/4 points today. Same day Iridium declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after defaulting on $1.5 billion. MOT owns 18 percent of Iridium, and guaranteed $800 million note. Iridium, provides phone service through a network of 66 satellites. Is supposed to be one of government's Y2K back-up communication systems.

They're running up these stocks before the "crash". Institutional investors will exit and leave "Joe six-pack" holding the bag. [J6P is the term Wall Street uses for the little guys.]

Suggest people protect their assets. Take some "money off the table" - fast. While the market's hot. October will be too late.

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), August 14, 1999.


Maybe their stock went up because they changed their long distance rates to 5 cents per minute no matter what day it is. They are trying to monopolize on the long distance carrier market and gain a bigger share of AT&T customers. It was a very smart move, but I won't be switching long distance carriers....that is until AT&T starts having trouble.

-- sittingonthefence (sittingonthefence@sittingonthefenceee.com), August 14, 1999.

MCI will not be "ready" until 12/13/99. It says so in their 10Q. Read it very closely. They said "year 2000 compliant in the third and fourth quarters of 1999." MCI is just a house of cards waiting to fall.

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), August 14, 1999.

I asked my Network Control buddy tonight about MCI, he shook his head and said "man their frame relay is screwed", sharp intake of breath etc. etc.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), August 14, 1999.


Gordon, the problems MCIW has been experiencing have nothing to do with Y2K. Software goes back into production as soon as it is remediated and test. That happens at different times for different packages. We will have a moratorium starting in Oct and we continue to do third party verification on code in production to ensure it stays compliant. The problems deal with Lucent equipment (please read the reports on those outages), not our Y2K remediated code.

Y2K Dave, you have a serious grudge with MCI don't you? Did they fire you or something? You need to read the mission critical done and the non-critical in June statement one more time.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), August 14, 1999.


"Gordon, the problems MCIW has been experiencing have nothing to do with Y2K. " -And how the hell would you know?

"Software goes back into production as soon as it is remediated and test. That happens at different times for different packages." -What the hell does that actually say?

"Problems deal with Lucent equipment (please read the reports on those outages), not our Y2K remediated code."-I have read the reports and I have talked to people in the industry who do business with you (not sure if you're really MCI or full of it) and they tell me you don't have ANY CLUE what the problem is. Lucent makes a convenient scapegoat but their stock was up too.

"Y2K Dave you have a serious grudge with MCI don't you? Did they fire you or something? You need to read the mission critical done and the non-critical in June statement one more time." -So now it becomes "they". What happened to "We" Maria?

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), August 14, 1999.


So you know more than I on this topic? Prove it.

Ok I'll explain a different way. You seemed to have implied that the problems resulted from remediated software going back into production, which only happens in the 3Q99. That's not the case, remediated software has been going back into production as soon as it's completed testing and has been occuring since June of 1998.

So you know that no clue means "not any idea", "not even close to narrow it down to a particular install", "could include any system anywhere within MCIW". Do you think the rest of the world is as stupid as you?

What's the question on they vs we? What are you trying to ask here? I don't get it. So you think I should take responsibility for y2k Dave's grudge?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), August 14, 1999.


Maria, don't get personally upset about this. They are just questioning your credibility, thats all. Happens all the time, especially when what you post does not jive with the facts, and even tends to contradict other things that you say (even in the same post!).

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), August 14, 1999.

Just thought that this might be interesting if Lucent Technologies is involved.
The first link is to their latest 10 -Q and below that is their Y2K site.

 LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES INC 10 - Q Aug. 12
 

 Lucent's Year 2000 Program

-- Brian (imager@home.com), August 14, 1999.



"The problems deal with Lucent equipment (please read the reports on those outages), not our Y2K remediated code." Maria

Snippet taken from Lucent's 10-Q linked above:

[snip]
"Lucent is completing programs to make its new commercially available products Year 2000 ready and has developed evolution strategies for customers who own non-Year 2000 ready Lucent products. With one minor exception, all of the upgrades and new products needed to support customer migration are already generally available.

Lucent has launched extensive efforts to alert customers who have non-Year 2000 ready products, including direct mailings, phone contacts and participation in user and industry groups. Lucent also has a Year 2000 website www.lucent.com/y2k that provides Year 2000 product information. Lucent continues to cooperate in the Year 2000 information sharing efforts of the Federal Communications Commission and other governmental bodies.

Lucent believes it has sufficient resources to provide timely support to its customers that require product migrations or upgrades. However, because this effort is heavily dependent on customer cooperation, Lucent monitors customer response and takes steps to encourage customer responsiveness, as necessary."

hmmm...so who's at fault here? MCI "It's Lucent's fault!" Lucent "No it's MCI's fault, they didn't contact us on this minor point!" MCI "Maria said not to worry!" Lucent "Who's Maria?"

-- Chris (%$^&^@pond.com), August 14, 1999.


I just received this email from my home service provider:

Subject: *IMPORTANT* Notice of Emergency Network Maintenance Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 15:10:14 -0400 (EDT) From: feedback@bellsouth.net

Valued Customers:

At 11:15 pm 8/13/99 WorldCom, our Global Service Provider, notified our Network Operations Center of the need to perform emergency maintenance on their Frame Relay network beginning at 12 Noon (EDT) Saturday 8-14-99 and finishing at approximately 12 Noon (EDT) Sunday 8-15-99.

During the course of this emergency maintenance, you may or may not experience the following: congestion over the network, latency and potentially, loss of connectivity. The work being performed by WorldCom necessitates the complete shutdown of all frame relay switches within the WorldCom network, and a controlled, one by one, reinstatement of each frame relay switch back onto the network.

We have been assured by WorldCom that every effort will be made to reduce the impact to our network and to resolve the issue necessitating the emergency maintenance as expediently as possible.

We will notify you once we have received confirmation from WorldCom that all work has been completed.

Thank you for your patience and continued business,

BellSouth.net Consumer Communications & Relations feedback@bellsouth.net

-- Spindoc' (spindoc_99_2000@yahoo.com), August 14, 1999.


Ah, your highness you dazzle me with your brillant statements, mudwrestling anyone?

Chris, where does it say that Lucent's integrated equipment was related to Y2K. Thanks for snipping their info for me.

Gordon, still waiting for you to tell me how you get your insider knowledge of MCIW

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), August 14, 1999.


"Gordon, the problems MCIW has been experiencing have nothing to do with Y2K. " -And how the hell would you know?

The KOS was correct. I am trying to validate your credentials. I have no inside knowledge of MCI at all. NONE. I never claimed to. If you know what the problem is, genius, then why not enlighten us all. Dazzle me with your profound insight to frame relays. Better yet go help MCI fix their fucking problem.

My friends at "bigass consulting" reference their "tech hotline" each day and this week's message said "MCI is still experiencing problems with their frame relay network. They are uncertain as to when they will be able to fully restore service". He then told me that they are experiencing problems with their clients all over the globe.

I just got done switching ISP's. The reason that I could not reply to you is that your damn buddies at MCI hosed my ISP. So screw you and you're indignant little attitude. My service has been down for two weeks. I've spent several days at work watching 100's of thousands of dollars slip away due to your freaking friends at MCI. Piss off.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), August 14, 1999.


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