Telecommunications giant, WorldCom, plagued by bankruptcy court and fraud allegations, got rid of its name in favor of MCI Communications in the space of a few hours, but the change is more than cosmetic, according to the company's vice-president of global marketing, Ron McMurtrie.
In an interview a day after WorldCom announced the name change, McMurtie said the company's logos and business cards changed "literally overnight". In taking the name of the company WorldCom acquired in 1998, the company was refocusing on delivering service to customers, he said.
"It's all about unifying and moving on," McMurtrie said of the name change.
Next up for MCI is a series of bankruptcy court hearings, the first in about a month, during which the company would seek approval for its three-year business plan, McMurtrie said. That plan is available at http://global.mci.com/news/infodesk/forward/bizplan/.
"The plan is really about setting our path forward and satisfying our creditors," he said.
MCI also announced this week it was moving its corporate headquarters from Clinton, Mississippi, to Ashburn, Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC.
The move to the Washington area made sense, McMurtrie said, because government regulators were nearby and Ashburn already had a huge MCI technology campus with 4500 employees.
He used words such as "fresh start" and "at the starting gate" to describe the employee attitudes at the renamed company.
While MCI still needed to deal with the bankruptcy, that was not the main focus at the new MCI, McMurtrie said.
"What's next is our customers - we're moving forward," he said.
