Amazing how markets can misread these things – looking resolutely down the wrong end of the telescope and perceiving the alliance between British Telecommunications Plc and MCI Communications Corp as a threat to Sprint Corp’s US business as big customers gravitate to MCI and AT&T Co, the companies that have their international links lined up, Wall Street marked Sprint shares down $1 at $31.25: with three giant and a host of big international telephone companies eyeing the latest alliances nervously and itching to get their own tie-ups in place, Sprint is now the only game in town, and its scarcety value should ensure that any would-be partner has to pay a bigger premium to the market price for a stake than British Telecom has agreed to pay to MCI; the Big Three are of course France Telecom SA and the Deutsche Bundespost Telekom plus Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Co (the last being equally assiduously wooed by AT&T and British Telecom) – Telekom and France Telecom are actually ranked second and third in international traffic in 1991 in terms of minutes billed, after AT&T and ahead of British Telecom fourth, Cable & Wireless Plc fifth and MCI sixth.
