August 23, 1999
COMPRESSED DATA
Competitors and Others Woo MCI Customers Hit by Failure
ozens of Internet service providers who
were hit by blackouts or slowdowns during a
10-day partial failure of MCI Worldcom Inc.'s high-speed network have been approached by industrious competitors hoping
to steal them away from MCI Worldcom.
One company whose salesmen have been
calling to offer an alternative high-speed
connection to the Net's backbone is UUNet.
But that offer comes with an asterisk:
UUNet is a wholly owned subsidiary of MCI
Worldcom.
Several Internet providers contacted by
representatives of UUNet expressed anger
that they were not told during the sales pitch
about the relationship between the two companies.
"I had no idea when they called they were
part of the same company," said Phyllis
Porta, owner of LA Connections of Santa
Clarita, Calif., an Internet provider serving
500 customers. She said that MCI Worldcom's ownership of UUNet should have
been disclosed.
For its part, MCI Worldcom said UUNet
controlled its own, separate high-speed access to the Internet backbone and thus was
not selling access to the same network that
was disrupted for 10 days starting Aug. 5.
Linda Laughlin, a company spokeswoman,
said it was not uncommon for divisions within MCI Worldcom, the nation's No. 2 long-distance company, to have "channel conflict," meaning they compete for the same
customers.
MCI Worldcom last week attributed
blame for the failure to an upgrade of software made by Lucent Technologies Inc.
About 30 percent of MCI Worldcom's high-speed network customers were affected,
and on the weekend of Aug. 14-15 the company took the network down altogether for 24
hours to restore stability.
UUNet's overtures represented competition not just to its corporate cousins but in
some cases to MCI Worldcom customers,
like DataXchange, which buys network access wholesale from MCI Worldnet and sells
it to 150 Internet providers. About 66 of its
customers were blacked out completely
during MCI Worldcom's partial failure.
-- MATT RICHTEL
Latest Offer in Overseas Calls:
Free but Not Commercial-Free
nd now, free international phone calls --
if you can tolerate a 15-second advertisement at the beginning of each call followed
by another ad interrupting the conversation
every three minutes.
That is the proposition behind a very
young, very small start-up called Cortex Telecom, based in New York. For now, Cortex offers free calling between only five cities -- Brussels, London, Miami, New York
and Paris. But the company is seeking $15
million from venture capitalists and plans
to use the money to expand its network to
dozens of other cities around the world.
The service is fairly simple to use. In each
of its five cities, Cortex has a local access
number. A would-be user calls, answers
about 20 demographic questions and then
receives a code to use for calls to any of the
other four cities. (Oddly, it is not possible to
sign up at the company's Web site.)
The only fee borne by the user is the cost
of a local call to a Cortex access number,
and the user can talk as long as he or she
wants. But every three minutes, a 15-second
advertisement is played, and it is not possible to talk over the advertisement. Among
Cortex's initial advertisers in English are
the Ronald McDonald House, the Flatotel in
Manhattan (where Cortex is based) and
Mickey Mantle's restaurant.
Over all, about five minutes of every hour
is given over to advertising. In contrast to
the 13 minutes of every hour devoted to advertisements on another free service,
prime-time broadcast television, (including
promotions for coming shows and public
service announcements), five minutes
seems relatively unintrusive.
But just because consumers are willing to
accept interruptions during passive viewing
of fare like "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza
Place" does not necessarily mean they will
accept interruptions in their international
conversations. A company called Broadpoint offers free domestic long-distance
calls, but its customers generally have to
listen to advertisements only before the call
begins. -- SETH SCHIESEL
Another Free Offering
From a Web Site Operator
f your mother sends you unsolicited advertising, is it still junk mail?
This and perhaps other questions arise as
a result of a Miami start-up that is offering
to transform postal service from a model
based on stamps to one based on advertising. On the Web, of course.
The company: Postage4free.com.
The concept: Starting today, the company
is giving away 10 stamps and 10 envelopes
to people who visit its Web site.
The catch: The envelopes have advertisements. Some are attached with perforation,
which the sender rips off. Others are printed
on the back and insides.
But in this instance, the price of a 33-cent
stamp and an envelope is a bit more than
just having to look at an ad. To sign up, participants must answer nine demographic
questions about things like their interests
and hobbies, pet ownership and whether
they wear glasses or contacts. The envelopes they receive are supposed to carry ads
selected to match those demographics.
David R. Krop, the company's president
and a co-founder, said the idea behind gathering demographic data to personalize the
ads was that "people are getting coupons
they can actually use."
Or maybe not.
Alas, at this point, consumers may have to
settle for whichever advertisers the company can sign up. Krop said Postage4free.com was still trying to sell the positions.
As for your mother, Krop said that
Postage4free's envelopes did not qualify as
junk mail because people were participating voluntarily. But what about the recipients of the letters, who presumably had not
agreed to participate?
"That's a good question," he allowed. Apparently lacking a good answer, he noted:
"There is no clutter or waste with our product. And the front of the envelope is completely white."
Mother would no doubt be proud.
-- MATT RICHTEL
Related Sites
These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.
Matt Richtel at mrichtel@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.
