User:StainlessSteelRat/draft/ANS Communications

ANS Communications, Inc. (ANS) was a company that existed from 1995 to 2003 with a major operation center in Ann Arbor, Michigan as well as offices Elmsford and Purchase in New York state. It was one of the initial commercial Internet backbone infrastructure operation entities as it was responsible for managing the initial Internet T-3 backbone ANSNet infrastructure created via the NSFNet project.

History
ANS Communications has a shared history with non-profit Advanced Network and Services. Up until 1995, they are the same history. Please see the article for Advanced Network and Services for the pre-1995 history of ANS Communications.

Creation of ANS
ANS Communications, Inc. was created with the sale of the for-profit commercial business of the non-profit ANS. The non-profit ANS entity had assumed the operational responsibilities of the NSFNET backbone service and had contributed significantly to the transition and implementation of the new T3 Internet backbone service. The initial agreement of the sale of substantially all the assets, networking operations and related services of the non-profit ANS entity to America Online, Inc. (AOL) was announced on November 28, 1994. The sale was finalized in 1995 for a price of $35 million.

ANS under America Online, Inc. (AOL)
AOL acquired ANS to assist in building out its US and international dial-up networks so that it could connect users to its service. In this role, ANS served as AOL's primary Internet backbone network provider and supplier for AOLnet, AOL's proprietary data communications network. It served as the major provisioning entity to place dial-up modems throughout its service areas as well as operating and maintaining these large banks of modems and access infrastructure for AOL its Internet services. In 1997 alone, ANS expanded AOL's dial-up network from 143,000 modems to 350,000 modems which reached approximately 1,300 cities worldwide. ANS provided Internet access to AOL and AOL's subscribers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Japan.

ANS also provided network services to other corporate customers. As an example, on August 19, 1997, ANS announced the start of a service to manage security for corporate intranets, including the ability to manage firewalls from different vendors. The ANS InterManage service allowed organizations to outsource all their network security requirements. ANS supported its own ANS InterLock firewall, plus firewalls from Check Point Software Technologies and Raptor Systems. Those firewalls offered encryption, virus-scanning for email, and filtering Java Applets, JavaScript, and ActiveX.

ANS purchased by WorldCom
In 1997, WorldCom agreed to buy ANS from AOL for approximately $500 million. The purchase agreement was created in September, 1997 and was part of a deal for AOL to acquire the CompuServe Information Service (CIS) online service business. WorldCom would acquire CompuServe Network Services (CNS) portion of CompuServe. WorldCom announced the merger with CompuServe and acquisition of ANS on February 2, 1998 saying that it had been completed on January 31, 1998 with John Sidgmore, vice chairman and chief operations officer of WorldCom, stating "We are excited about the closing of these transactions and the potential that CompuServe Network Services and ANS bring to WorldCom. We wholeheartedly welcome the ANS and CNS employees to WorldCom.".

ANS under WorldCom
From practically the beginning of the purchase, ANS was planned to be merged with WorldCom's existing UUNET entity under its branding. Jordan Becker was the acting ANS CEO overseeing the integration of the company within UUNET.

The actual merger of ANS and UUNET took a few years. As part of the complex deal in acquiring ANS, WorldCom had also acquired CompuServe's Network Services. WorldCom first decided to combine ANS with the Compuserve Network Services, an existing WorldCom networking company called Gridnet, to create WorldCom Advanced Networks.

In 1998, WorldCom's AOL business, mainly the ANS, was a 500 person business unit that generated approximately $1.2B representing 30% of UUNET revenues.

In 1999, WorldCom acquired MCI and became MCI WorldCom, WorldCom Advanced Networks briefly became MCI WorldCom Advanced Networks. MCI WorldCom Advanced Networks was ultimately absorbed into UUNET.

WorldCom chapter 11 bankruptcy
In 2002, WorldCom filed for what was then the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in history. This was the result of what would be known as the WorldCom scandal, a major accounting scandal that came to light in the summer of 2002. WorldCom had overstated its assets by over $11 billion. At the time, it was the largest accounting fraud in American history.

This accounting fraud was not directly related to ANS or UUNET. However, the impact on these subsidiaries was fairly swift. Starting in June of 2002, WorldCom started laying off 20% of its work force totaling around 20% of its employoees. In July of 2002, WorldCom officially filed for bankruptcy. In December of 2002, WorldCom decided to close its ANS/UUNET operations as part of its restructuring. Fortunately, for ANS's staff in its Ann Arbor location, the state of Michigan had enacted the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act in 1988 that mandated companies provide notice at least 60 days in advance of covered business closings and covered mass layoffs. This meant most of the operational staff that were to be let go kept their jobs until the end of February, 2003.

ANS operations and milestones
ANS supported the growth of the AOL dial-up network before, during and after its time as a subsidiary of AOL by building and managing the hardware infrastructure. AOL was able to achieve rapid membership growth by growing its local dial-up access both around the US and internationally. ANS built, provisioned and managed a large portion of AOL's user infrastructure. Additionally, it provided engineering troubleshooting and management support to some equipment from other AOL contracted providers. ANS built and managed the largest dial-up network infrastructure during the peak of the use of this communication technology.

ANS played a prominent role in the development of the State of Michigan's Internet ecosystem and continues to be recognized for its role and contributions as recently as 2011 in its Michigan Cyber Initiative.