MCI Communications Corp’s annual report sheds a little more light on the company’s plans for alliances to deliver new services (CI No 2,139), saying that the company will use its high-speed digital telephone network as the base for multimedia services in alliance with other companies – With one intelligent, multimedia device – part telephone, part television and part computer – consumers will call up distant relatives and see them while they speak, the annual report says, and the company is not elaborating further; the report says a number of trends are emerging, including multimedia wireless communications and distributed processing, and MCI plans to be a player in these trends; it says the range of companies it is contacting regarding its consortium idea spans several industries under the broad definition of communications, but it is awaiting a response from the Federal Communications Commission to its proposal that consortia rather than individual companies be permitted to run Personal Communications Network before putting any discussions onto a formal basis.
