WorldCom blew internet bubble
"IT WAS an essential ingredient of dotcom business plans and conference slide-shows: Internet traffic, went the industry's favourite statistic, doubles every 100 days. The claim assumed unimpeachable status when it appeared in a report published by America's Department of Commerce in April 1998. Unfortunately for the telecoms firms that rushed to build networks to carry the reported surge in traffic, it wasn't true.

So where did the claim come from? According to Andrew Odlyzko, a former researcher at AT&T who is now at the University of Minnesota, the short answer is WorldCom."