MCI is rumoured to be seriously considering Qwest's latest offer for the telco. A Qwest deadline of Tuesday midnight, opens the possibility of a hostile takeover.

Last week, Qwest raised its bid to $8.9bn in response to an increased bid from competitor Verizon.

Verizon and MCI have been in battle for MCI, formerly known as WorldCom for months. The MCI board has constantly been for the Verizon offer.

Verizon is seen as the stronger telco strategically and its paper is more highly regarded.

A change to a hostile bid, would ensue if Qwest could no longer wait for the MCI board to recommend its offer.

Qwest have maintained since the start that MCI have been "favouring" Verizon's lower offer.

Verizon might have succeeded a long time ago, if a group of shareholders had not kicked up a fuss. They saw the board recommending the Verizon bid without fully considering the benefits of the Qwest offer.

The latest miisive from Qwest continued :- "We urge the MCI Board to cease its favoritism, stop attempting to tilt the regulatory playing field and run a fair, transparent, complete and timely sales process.

We believe our latest offer...is clearly superior and we have provided a significant amount of detail surrounding it. Therefore the MCI Board should now declare that our offer is superior, it said.

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