360networks raised $647.85 million in its April 2000 IPO, and it needed every dollar. The Vancouver company planned a 56,300-mile fiber network by the end of 2001, spanning North America and Europe and running under two oceans. Investors including Comcast and Tyco had agreed to buy about $510 million more in stock. Its new chief executive, Gregory Maffei, had just left the chief financial officer job at Microsoft. Fourteen months later, 360networks was bankrupt.

Worldwide Fiber Goes Global

The company began as Worldwide Fiber, and the Canadian construction group Ledcor was a major shareholder. Its bet was that the internet would need far more long-haul capacity than existed. By early 2000 it had built more than 12,200 route miles in North America and 4,900 in Europe. It planned undersea cables of 7,600 route miles between North America and Europe and 14,000 between South America and North America.

Fourteen Months to Bankruptcy

360networks priced its IPO at $14 a share in April 2000 and listed on Nasdaq as TSIX and on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It sold 46.275 million shares, weeks after the dot-com market peaked. Then carriers stopped buying capacity, and fiber builders ran short of cash. On June 27, 2001, 360networks cut 800 jobs. The next day it filed for creditor protection in Canada, and its main U.S. unit filed for Chapter 11.

Cover: Untitled (carriage tracks), Joshua Appleby Williams. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for tracks running to the horizon (fiber routes).