When WorldCom swallowed MFS Communications for $14.3 billion in 1996, MFS CEO James Crowe pocketed about $150 million and nestled in as WorldCom Inc.'s chairman. But presiding over meetings didn't suit the entrepreneurial Crowe. When Walter Scott, chairman of Peter Kiewit Sons Inc., offered Crowe the chance to build a new-age telecom company with $3 billion in startup capital, he jumped at the chance. ''Helping people communicate is what gets me up early in the morning and keeps me up late at night,'' Crowe says.

Crowe, 48, launched Denver-based Level 3 Communications Inc. in January with an ambitious objective: to triumph in the telecom wars by building a $9 billion network based on Internet technology that can transmit voice, data, fax, and video. By yearend, Crowe expects to sell data and fax services to big businesses in six U.S. cities. In a decade, he plans to serve more than 60 U.S. cities and others overseas. Industry experts are betting that Crowe's experience at MFS Communications Inc. will help him hit pay dirt again. ''The guy saw the future a while ago,'' says Randy Storch, CEO of Open Port Technology Inc., a Chicago software company.

While an executive for Kiewit's electrical-utility business in the mid-'80s, Crowe saw his chance when a contractor appealed for money to launch a fiber network. Instead, Crowe persuaded Kiewit to float him $500 million to start Omaha-based MFS. The company was the first to compete with regional Bells by attracting business clients--many of them Internet service providers.

Crowe caught Internet fever while at MFS. That's when Microsoft Corp. Chairman William H. Gates III told Kiewit's Scott that the Net would displace switched networks. Once Crowe got the word, he shelled out $2 billion for Internet pioneer UUNET Technologies Inc., whose network offered higher capacity at less cost than Bell networks. ''The light bulb went off for us,'' recalls Crowe. ''We recognized that the Internet wasn't about flashy graphics and cool people, it was about the economics of communications.''

Level 3 claims it can deliver telecommunications services at less than one-tenth the cost of traditional telephone networks. While analysts agree that its costs are lower, Level 3 lacks two key assets: customers and an established brand name. Still, Level 3 and other rivals have the Bell companies ''running like the devil to reinvent themselves,'' says telecom analyst Jeffrey Kagan. Question is, can they keep up with Crowe?

By Roger O. Crockett in Chicago