Who's hot, who's not: Players reorient themselves after MCI picks WorldCom

The merger of MCI and WorldCom has multiple implications for industry players: a viable competitor to AT&T in managed data services, a heavyweight in Internet traffic, another behemoth in the multinational world of telecommunications.

A glance at the current situation shows that while such a merger would be no easy task, it could propel other carriers to look for suitable partners.

GTE ADDS GENUITY TO STABLE GTE Internetworking is acquiring Genuity Inc., a value-added provider of distributed application hosting solutions. GTE Internetworking plans to employ Genuity's data centers and Hopscotch load-balancing technology to improve Internet traffic flow, particularly for e-commerce.

NEXTEL TRIES RETAIL Nextel Communications has begun a retail distribution trial in CompUSA stores in the Washington/ Baltimore area. Despite this and another distribution agreement with Ritz Camera Centers, Nextel still will focus on business customers.

ROCKWELL SUES BAY Rockwell Semiconductor Systems filed suit against Bay Networks last week, claiming that Bay violated its licensing agreement for Rockwell's 56Kflex modem technology. Bay plans to proceed with product development and does not offer both 56Kflex and 3Com's X2 56K technologies in a single platform.