William Mcgowan, Mci Founder

WASHINGTON - William G. McGowan, the feisty founder and chairman of MCI Communications Corp. whose battle against the world's largest telecommunications company revolutionized the industry, died yesterday after a heart attack.

McGowan, 64, had a heart transplant in 1987 but continued as chief executive officer until December. He died at Georgetown University Hospital.

Under McGowan's leadership, MCI challenged the monopoly of the giant American Telephone & Telegraph Co. in a lawsuit that led ultimately to the breakup of AT&T in 1984.

"He helped build one of the world's leading long-distance companies," said the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Alfred Sikes. "He helped provide millions of Americans more choices at lower prices. And for nearly three decades he consistently demonstrated that breadth of imagination needed to contemplate and achieve great things."

McGowan began his challenge to AT&T when he took over Microwave Communications Inc. in 1968.

In 1973 the company obtained clearance to offer commercial, private-line service between Chicago and St. Louis for customers dissatisfied with AT&T.

McGowan took that discontent and built it into a landmark antitrust case against AT&T.

At the FCC, in the courts and in Congress, McGowan accused AT&T of abusing its monopoly power, stifling competition and harming consumers.

AT&T fought back for 16 years, finally agreeing to divestiture under pressure from lawsuits by MCI and the federal government.

"Bill McGowan will go down in business history as one of America's foremost entrepreneurs," AT&T Chairman Robert Allen said in a statement. "Probably more than any other single person he helped to reshape the long-distance business from the monopoly that it had been for so long to the highly competitive industry that we know today."

The son of a railroad engineer, McGowan worked his way through Kings College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. and later graduated from Harvard Business School.