After reading this I wondered if WFR will benefit in the expected growth of the Telecommunication Industry and when if so.
So telecommunications providers and
equipment makers will have to transform
their infrastructure from what they have
invested in over the past 100 years, the study
says.
canoe.com
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For Thursday, February 18, 1999
Telecom sector on verge of
huge growth
Deregulation to drive growth at
pace of computing explosion
By DAVID AKIN
The Financial Post
A new study suggests the
telecommunications industry is about to enter
a phase of growth that will parallel the past
two decades of growth in the computer
industry.
In its annual technology forecast,
consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers PLC
said performance and price improvements in
telecommunications services will be driven
by new competition in newly deregulated
markets in Canada and around the world.
"Computing power has increased by 1,000
times over the last 20 years, but these
improvements haven't been matched in
telecommunications services," said Terry
Retter, principal consultant for
PricewaterhouseCoopers' technology centre
in Menlo Park, Calif.
"In the next few years, the
telecommunications world will begin to
travel down the same path the computing
industry has been on since the late 1970s.
This is partly due to deregulation and
increased competition, but more importantly
to the tremendous increase in the demand for
bandwidth resulting from the growth of the
Internet."
So telecommunications providers and
equipment makers will have to transform
their infrastructure from what they have
invested in over the past 100 years, the study
says.
In Toronto yesterday for the release of the
10th annual version of his firm's technology
forecast, Mr. Retter painted a broad-brush
vision of the future in the computing and
telecommunications industries. The key
predictions in the forecast included:
- Consolidation and restructuring in the
telecommunications industry will continue to
the point that there will likely be four or five
global "supercarriers" and thousands of
regional and national niche players. "The
ones who leverage the existing infrastructure
best are going to win," Mr. Retter said.
- Corporate information technology
departments have successfully convinced
corporate finance departments that the current
levels of IT spending are normal, even
though current budgets usually include
additional funds for Y2K and euro currency
conversions. Once Y2K spending is over,
some time in the middle of next year, as much
as $10-billion will be freed up for corporate
IT managers to spend on developing
applications and devices.
y Even as computing devices get smaller,
cheaper, and more powerful, the large
mainframe computer will remain the
cornerstone of business computing, as long as
manufacturers of mainframes can double the
processing power every 18 months while
maintaining the same price point.
- Consumers will increasingly trust
e-commerce transactions, thereby creating
the critical mass that business planners will
be unable to avoid when making strategic
decisions. |
