In comments filed with the U.S. District Court handling the WorldCom case, AT&T described the proposed settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and WorldCom as “a completely inadequate response to a level of corporate malfeasance never before witnessed in the history of America.” AT&T is arguing that a $500 million payment is not commensurate with the scale and scope of the fraud.
In addition, AT&T argues that the ramifications of WorldCom’s falsely reported Internet traffic numbers have had “a devastating impact on the telecommunications industry.” AT&T said that for years WorldCom fraudulently reported that its Internet traffic doubled every quarter. In fact, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Federal Communications Commission adopted the false Internet traffic figures, which then served as the benchmark for the industry. AT&T contends that while WorldCom reaped tremendous financial rewards from the investment community for its false reports of business growth, the entire industry and investing public were harmed as WorldCom’s false traffic numbers led to irrational and unjustified investments and the current fiber glut.
http://www.att.com/news/item/0,1847,11767,00.html
- AT&T published a paper in July 2001 tracking growth on its IP backbone and assesing claims by other carriers.
- “Growth of the Internet,�? by K.G. Coffman and A.M. Odlyzko, AT&T Labs, July 2001
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/oft.internet.growth.pdf
(44 pages, Adobe Acrobat format)
