MCI, 3Com add to alliance

In telecommunications, no one can go it alone. MCI has joined with networking vendor 3Com to co-market MCI's Hyperstream broadband data services, wide area frame relay services and wide area asynchronous transfer mode services with 3Com's products.

The alliance continues the trend in marketing partnerships between service providers and equipment vendors.

"It takes more than a service provider to a make an end-to-end network solution," said Melanie Hanssen, executive manager of Hyperstream marketing at MCI.

"It's a significant step for MCI to say that 3Com is bringing the right programs together to tackle the marketplace," said Roger Manka, vice president of sales in 3Com's carrier systems business.

MCI's sales force will offer 3Com products as components to their customers' networks, and 3Com's sales team will market MCI's services to their customers.

"Networking decisions come from a lot of areas," said Hanssen. "Some planners look at the routers first, some decide to use frame relay for their WAN first. We try to make it a two-way street."

Companies will be able to buy a variety of outsourced and managed services from MCI that incorporate 3Com's hub, router and remote access products. MCI also will offer installation and configuration for these local and wide area networks.

Alliances are nothing new to MCI. The carrier already works closely with equipment vendors like Cisco Systems and Bay Networks.

3Com hopes to have future resale arrangements with other Internet service providers and Bell companies.

* AccessBuilder 9000

* ATM access devices

* NetBuilder routers

* OfficeConnect hubs

* SuperStack II hubs

* Total Control hubs