Slimming Down the Fat Wireless Cow
Copyright: Elmatador
The short lived wireless bubble came to an end the wireless market is now being deflated. Why has it been inflated to those high levels?
Start with the lobbyists. Every vendor has hired guns. These hired guns are recruited from telecoms bureaucracies all over the world. They can open doors. Negotiate backroom deals, keep the US lobby out, delivert White Papers to the right tables and such.
In most cases, they had before ties with governments. You know, you get a former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Communications from an Asian country. A former Ministry of Communications of South America. A former University teacher from Western Europe, a former diplomat from Eastern Europe. Pretty soon you have a UN of elderly bureaucrats.
Those guys went around selling the UMTS Gospel to the ears that they had, i.e., governments. Governments, being who they are, immediately asked: What is in it for us? The lobbyists said: "Relax, you can sell spectrum by the kilogram and raking in the a ton of cash". Hence the obscene prices paid in the first auctions.
This whetted the appetite of wireless operators, which started eyeing the possibility of floating their wireless businesses. Well, if nothing (spectrum is nothing, have you seen GE paying for the spectrum they use for their x-ray machines?) can attract those billions imagine a real company!
People would come with wheelbarrows with the cash to buy Orange. (I mean the operator, not the citrus). They set the prices on the ceiling. But the buyers are in the cellar.
to be continued...
Just not to say that I stopped placing my insights here: |
