did many long-distance equities. Global Crossing and World- The Death of Distance and of the Long-Distance Carriers Figure 6-3. Wireless and Long-Distance Stock Prices, 1996-2003 Index, March 2002 = 100 First RBOC 1,000 One-Rate Plan LD entry introduced Long distance Wireless Source: Author's calculations and www.finance.yahoo.com. Com, for example, entered bankruptcy. Global Crossing sold its Asian assets to other world telecom companies, and it and WorldCom were reor- ganized under U.S. bankruptcy laws. Sprint and Qwest still are solvent, in large part because of their local telephone operations. At the end of 1999, AT&T, WorldCom (later MCI), Sprint, Qwest, and Global Crossing had a combined market capitalization of $472 billion and a combined market value of $568 billion. By the end of 2003, AT&T had sold or spun off its cable and wireless businesses, Qwest had all but abandoned the long-distance business, Global Crossing had been reorga- nized in bankruptcy, and WorldCom was preparing to emerge from bank- ruptcy. By mid-2004 three carriers-AT&T Sprint, and the reorganized MCI-had a market capitalization of $41 billion and a market value of $87 billion. But even this latter total overstates the value of the long- distance business per se. The value of Sprint's long-distance assets is now essentially zero (see table 6-4 for details). Only AT&T retains much mar- ket value, but its equity share price has declined by more than 30 percent since it spun off its most valuable assets-namely, its cable operations. AT&T and MCI have a combined market value of about $32 billion in their long-distance operations despite having invested more than $40 bil- lion in these operations in the past four years. The Death of Distance and of the Long-Distance Carriers Table 6-4. Estimated Market Value of the Leading Long-Distance Carriers, June 2004 Billions of dollars Market (market cap + long-distance Long-distance Carrier book value of debt) assets assets 10.0 (local assets) MCI (WorldCom) Sprint 17.2 (local lines) 31.5 (wireles