I've tried parsing the original press release
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/0
5-28-1998/0000666960&EDATE= . Here's what I come up with.
Think of the services being provided as existing in three chunks: raw
transport, wholesale, and retail. Under this deal,
1) MCI will continue to provide raw transport (think of it as Layer 1
stuff) for the traffic associated with its Internet wholesale
("backbone") services, at least for now.
2) C&W will take over (own) the routers, the connection agreements, and
the service agreements for providing wholesale services to ISPs. Looks
like this applies worldwide. C&W will be a customer of MCI for raw
transport.
3) MCI will continue to own the service agreements and be the service
provider to end users (to corporate customers for access and/or Web
hosting, plus dial-up internetMCI consumers.) For some period (they say
2 years), MCI will be a customer of C&W for backbone services.
MCI and C&W bravely say in their press release that this deal "should
clear the way for the swift approval of the MCI WorldCom merger." We'll
see. I expect that the EC will require that C&W have an explicit "out"
on the transport piece (i.e. be able to take in-house or contract with
others for the big transport pipes as it chooses.)
Pete