Moving on, Crowe resigns WorldCom chairmanship

James Q. Crowe resigned as chairman of the board of WorldCom last week, six months after the merger between WorldCom and MFS, the competitive local exchange carrier company he founded.

As reported in Telephony last week, Crowe had not been active in day-to-day business at Worldcom for several months. Industry insiders have speculated that his early departure may be related to potential telecom endeavors.

When asked about the future, Crowe said, "I like communications. I still think it's the place to be for the next decade or two. Networking is one of the most interesting opportunities in all of business.

Crowe recently took another job as president and chief executive officer of Kiewit Diversified Group, a subsidiary of privately held Peter Kiewit Sons. KDG has communications assets, he said, and "you can bet we'll be emphasizing that more and more with time.

Crowe has mixed feelings about his departure after spending 10 years building up MFS, but he believes selling was the right thing for the shareholders, who he estimates made about $16 billion total from the sale. On the same day as Crowe's departure, Walter Scott Jr., chairman and CEO of Peter Kiewit Sons, also left the board of WorldCom, citing personal reasons.

CLINTON HAS HIS SAY In President Clinton's e-commerce policy unveiled last week, he urged that no new taxes be imposed on Internet commerce and that electronic payments be free from regulation. He also encouraged rating systems and filtering technologies and called for protection of Web copyrights, patents and trademarks.

PBMS GOES SOUTH Pacific Bell Mobile Services has expanded its PCS offering in Southern California to include Los Angeles. The carrier's GSM system-also active in San Diego, Las Vegas, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area-extends north to Santa Barbara, south through Orange County and east to Nevada. PBMS also announced that it has activated 100,000 customers.

AT&T STEPS INTO ITALY AT&T has joined with Italy's Stet/Telecom Italia to serve international customers, focusing on the Latin American and European regions. The agreement, subject to governmental and European Union approval, is expected to be completed by the end of this year.