Launching a program to lure new, fly-by-night customers with instant cash few in the face of MCI’s Zero Tolerance policy. But Rapid Advance was no more loopy than the other schemes management had been cooking up by 1996 to maintain MCI’s growth-stock mystique. They included paying $682 million for a satellite TV license in January, the $2 billion Internet 2000 initiative unveiled in March, and a multimedia joint venture with News Corp., dubbed SkyMCI, announced in April.11
