In 1987, MCI partnered with IBM and Merit Network (a network run by triad of universities in Michigan) to respond to a National Science Foundation proposal to develop a high-speed telecommunications network called National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). This network used the TCP/IP protocol that had been developed by the United States Department of Defense ARPANet and was the immediate forerunner to the Internet. In 1988, Vint Cerf was working at CNRI and obtained support from MCI and permission from the Federal Networking Council to interconnect MCI Mail with the NSFNET. In 1989, it was the first commercial e-mail service to do so. Immediately, most of the other commercial e-mail providers also got permission to interconnect to the Internet, leading to their interconnection with each other. In 1994, NSF announced that it would terminate the NSFNET operation and support the development of Network Access Point operation to link the networks that had been interconnected by NSFNET. NSF also proposed that an academic research network be built called the Very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) and MCI responded. MCI also built a separate commercial Internet service, MCI.net, which was an integral part of the global Internet backbone. It was sold to Cable & Wireless plc as part of the merger of MCI with Worldcom in 1998.