'Good Riddance' Says Analyst As Concert Cartel Disappears - 10/18/01
Announcement this week of the demise of Concert, a joint venture between British Telecom and AT&T means the end of the old-style operators, according to telco analyst Paul Budde.
From Computer Daily News
"The partnership in Concert was a defensive, rather than offensive, move, as they were trying to save their market share, rather than move forward," Budde told Computer Daily News.
"Concert was not offering any new opportunities and when two companies such as BT and AT&T get together to form a cartel they are prone to spend more time in-fighting rather than looking at the business.
"In comparison the new breed like Global Crossing and the Telstra-Pacific Century CyberWorks joint venture are new operators with new networks seeking new opportunities."
Budde says there is no great need these days for global networks as the Internet fulfills that role at a tenth of the cost. "There are very few organizations other than the FBIs and CIAs who need these secure networks, leading to a general demise of the solutions offered by Concert, Global One and the rest of their ilk," said Budde.
Both BT and AT&T will now offer the Concert services independently.
Local customers should not be affected, as they will continue to be looked after by the distributors who sold them the services initially - like Clear in New Zealand and Telstra and BT in Australia.
What's the future of Concert's Australian workforce? No-one locally was talking, but a Hong Kong-based Concert spokesperson said, "Every effort would be made to transition the 150 local staff and the 300 regional staff to wherever it makes sense. Inevitably there will be some redundancies, but it is too early to say what numbers will be affected."
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