This week, MCI negotiates its future with suitors Verizon and Qwest. Throughout its relatively short life, MCI has lived in the fast lane, tempting fate at every turn. This week is no different.

As a naive new entrant in the 1970s, MCI challenged the incumbent monopoly AT&T, the largest corporation in America at the time. Despite AT&T’s efforts to destroy MCI, it survived. AT&T’s breakup in 1983 opened new opportunities for a large and growing MCI.

MCI survived expansion of long-distance competition in the early 1990s. Hundreds of smaller companies followed, many seeking to supplant MCI. But MCI thrived, proving even more aggressive and competitive than its imitators.

MCI got through the initial years of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 – which unleashed an unpredictable new legal regime – and its market capitalization increased.

One of MCI’s aggressive imitators, however, succeeded remarkably well. WorldCom, led by Bernie Ebbers, swallowed the larger master MCI in 1998. The corporate name became WorldCom. But for many who followed the industry, it was just MCI with a global name.

WorldCom, nee, MCI became emblematic of the telecommunications bubble: Its market capitalization rose meteorically and vanished into oblivion. Mr. Ebbers and a small inner circle had engaged in the largest corporate fraud in history.

Accounting scandals imploded Enron. Once-venerable names such as Arthur Andersen dissolved as a consequence of their association with WorldCom. Could the remnant of MCI survive while others disappeared?

In 2002, it was hard to find anyone with faith in the future of what had once been the high-flying MCI. Congress held hearings. Lawsuits against WorldCom and those associated with it were filed across America.

WorldCom was in bankruptcy at the same time as many other telecommunications companies; few would emerge intact. WorldCom’s tarnish and pending legal liabilities dwarfed the rest of the industry.

But a small group of brave investors saw what most of the rest of us could not: MCI would make it. Of course, large firms such as Enron and Arthur Andersen could fail, but MCI was different. It had billion-dollar contracts with the government. It was the only effective counterbalance to AT&T in the lucrative enterprise telecommunications submarket.

Fortune 500 companies would not abandon WorldCom because AT&T could raise prices if WorldCom disappeared. MCI had millions and millions of residential customers. And perhaps its greatest asset was its once and future name: MCI.

Investors bought WorldCom bonds for pennies on the dollar and took control in bankruptcy court. They renamed the discredited company by its once proud name MCI. They hired Michael Capellas as CEO and appointed a board of financial luminaries led by Nicholas Katzenbach.

Of course, no one believed, and MCI did not pretend, that it could remain as a stand-alone business. But it could and would be a valuable asset to a large corporation. How could this be achieved?

The game plan was simple: (1) resolve outstanding legal disputes, (2) emerge from bankruptcy intact, and then (3) sell the company at a good price, thereby returning maximum value to investors.

Of these three steps, it was thought that the last would surely be the easiest. Groups without the financial expertise of MCI sell companies flawlessly. MCI would certainly avoid the disasters of corporate transactions – proxy fights, shareholder lawsuits, and a protracted public paralysis that erodes investor and employee confidence.

But this didn’t happen. MCI is perilously close to the disasters of corporate transactions as Verizon and Qwest bid for it. The MCI management and board have clumsily handled the competing suitors.

In the coming weeks, perhaps one of the final chapters in the fairy-tale life of MCI will have a happy ending. Perhaps Carlos Slim and the other major investors in MCI will believe that the deal negotiated by the management team and board is the best opportunity. Perhaps one of the suitors, Verizon or Qwest, will concede defeat because it has been unambiguously outbid for MCI.

MCI should not tempt fate. It is difficult to explain how MCI could possibly have negotiated the best offer for the company only to receive much higher subsequent public offers. If anyone can resolve this situation, it is the MCI board. It is time they took control.

A former FCC commissioner, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com.