The analysts started yesterday and do not bring to the table a baggage of knowledge about the industry. They just saw too much money coming into this sector and went for it. Perhaps in 12 months they will be analysing oil stocks. Perhaps those same analyst were saying the fall of Thailand as just a correction but overall South East Asia had strong fundamentals.
Now if you have known, and followed this industry, for a while you'd know from where this industry came and where it is going. You may even make mistakes, but you'd far less mistakes than analysts.
Pendulum went from that side and swung way out into the opposite side. I explain: This business had been long dominated by the engineering profession. They kept the grip too long and too tight in this business. They lost it out to business people. Business people stepped in and started having the upper hand. It was good to the business. It dealt away with a lot of dead wood. It did away with CCITT, which was a wonderful thing. It was necessary if we keep in mind that de-regulation, privatisation and globalisation had taken the world by storm. (It started in the eighties when the British separate the Post Office from telecommunications (your run of the mill analysis does not know that started there but we know it).
But lets go back form the industry came from. There you have those operators whose business model based on long distance. They were overcharging business users and the users of long distance services and providing local services for free. No distance does not matter. Barriers of entry are lower and competition is eating out into their long distance revenue. Businesses do not want to be paying the inflated rates. Just note CSCO who made a business out of whispering into the ears of these very businesses.
Then came Telecom Act of 1996 with mandated competition. Which judging by the results only make lawyers and lobbyists richer. There is a lot of technology now on the table. Now is time to chew it up. Then there will be some time to digest it. What is going to happen is that until the existing infrastructure is ready for the scrap heap, the business landscape is not going to change very much.
In five years time, when all that money those operators (directed by their engineers I mentioned above ) put in a pile of software upgrades for 'intelligent' network, obsolete ISDN cards, telephone switches and SONET transport is amortized then we would see a new next next generation network being implemented. In the mean time Mike will be making money with his legacy investment. Thta's because the ERICYs, LU's, NT's. ALA's, NEC's and Siemens of this world would be developing lots of wrap around technologies to extend the life of the investment those operators put on their networks.
By the time this next next generation network is built, it is going to be built, it is not going to be built to carry voice as this stuff we have inside CO's (Central Offices). It is going to be built to carry silicon coackroaches. Those gazillions of bits going up down networks realizing those things coming out of the PPT presentations of marketing people. Wireless, which has a better price performance than wired networks, would, by then, had taken over that voice traffic.
Also Spracht Elmatador.
By the way: What is the e-mail address of this guy in SI who chooses the Cool Posting of the day, Please? |
