Huff and tough

For Rolla Huff, the newly crowned president and CEO of integrated communications provider MGC Communications, lack of ambition or determination is definitely not a concern. It's clear that whatever company he touches, Huff is obsessed with helping it recognize and seize its full potential.

Before coming to MGC - the company actually moved its executive offices from Las Vegas to Rochester, N.Y., to accommodate its new CEO - Huff was president and chief operating officer of Frontier Corp. In that position, Huff played a pivotal role in augmenting Frontier's strengths, which eventually gave Global Crossing reason to want those assets. "We were able to leverage assets to significantly increase share value in a very short period of time," Huff says.

But not long after Global Crossing's acquisition of Frontier took effect, Huff made the move to MGC.

To Huff, who spent several years at the AT&T executive launch pad like many others, MGC represents another great challenge because it has strong assets but lacks recognition. "I want to bring the profile of MGC up to the level it deserves," Huff says. "The investment community trusts that I will do smart things. And I have enough credibility [in the investment community] that people will want to invest."

Those potential investments, coupled with the company's existing co-location sites in 300 cities, may help Huff reach his goal of making MGC a national company in 12 to 18 months. "I am planning in months rather than years," Huff says.

In addition, the service provider has taken the voice-over-DSL leap, which it currently is offering in the Las Vegas area. MGC can deliver the services consumers want at a reasonable price, he says.

But the pricing and sheer connectivity still is not enough. "[You] need to be a generator of data rather than just a carrier of it," Huff says. Providing more applications for customers will serve as a catalyst for MGC, he adds. That, in turn, is giving rise to more partnerships with application service providers to help meet customer requests.

What else does Huff have up his sleeve? He says to watch for well-known names to be joining him in MGC's executive ranks.

Apparently investors aren't the only ones who think Huff is worth banking on.