MCI is mulling the latest offer from Qwest, according to the reports from the US. It has until midnight Tuesday to accept or Qwest said it would pull its offer, paving the way for a possible hostile take-over.

Last week Qwest upped its offer to $8.9bn after that other dogged suitor, Verizon, increased its bid for MCI to $7.6bn earlier this week.

News that MCI is chewing over Qwest's bid will no doubt be welcome news for the telco that has refused to let Verizon's bid to acquire MCI go unchallenged. On Friday Qwest issued yet another strongly worded statement that accused MCI of "favouring" Verizon's lower offer.

Said the company in a statement: "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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