Eric, the EU market(+ some "old time stories")
The important EU thing is that every square meter should
have 4-5 competing carriers to ensure competition, avoid
regional defacto monopolies. (just to reiterate in more
detail)
Additionally roaming should be cheaper by having the
large operators with EU-wide coverage, but is OK now
to pick extra money from the traveling businessman,
the industry, as well as having tourists doing the same in
poorer nations,etc. (ref discussion on global roaming
tariffs)
This reminds me of what telecom in europe was before
EU, every nation had at least one manufacturer, some
had a combined operator-manufacturer (like Ma Bell),
some kept them more or less apart, some even a couple
of manufacturer so that they would compete to some degree.
(Finland, Nokia + stateowned, and Sonera + many local
private operators, and Sweden-Norway-Ericsson to compete
with))
E.g. in the late 70s, early 80s the "message" was that these
20-25 manufacturers would decline to 4-5 and few actually
believed it at that time, but now it is Alcatel, Siemens,
Ericsson and Nokia.
Additionally few could really compete globally as their
domestic market was too small or it was impossible
to have an large enough market to compete with USA.
For Nokia this was especially critical as the domestic
market was not enough as a platform, increasing the market
meant first "conquering" Sweden, then Norway, Denmark, the
BeNeLux countries and then finally try to get a foothold
in Germany,France,England,(USA)and at that point the product
was already old and one had to restart the whole process.
Our old reliable "buddy" Russia helped some by providing
long time contracts, but above was still an impossible task
with a 5 million domestic market.
But with the common market of EU everything changed, for
the first time there was a 200-300 million pop. market
open for good products and mass production, similar
to that of USA.
One critical thing was the Nordic NMT as well as the
traditionally more competitive, open market within the
scandinavian countries (the cute swedes).
That is, my point is that EU was a thing about to
explode competitively, if things "didn't go wrong",
first time a large enough (european) common market
to make large enough investments possible (as in USA).
Bottom line is that the EU market can be used to
isolate EU companies, just like USA, but also to
gain a common advantage for both and in addition
Asia, the "emerging markets", etc.
But in no case is this, or should be, a question of
"destructive competition", instead there should be a good
possibility of "constructive competition" which means one
should not "conquere" either EU or USA, nor China, Korea nor
Latin America,etc,etc but instead make sure everyone gets
a "piece of the cake", not only as consumers but preferrably as
manufacturers, R&D, tax payers, share holders,etc,etc.
In these troubled times maybe it will be possible to
keep USA from the deep R-word because EU, Asia are in
different phases, in some years it will probably be the
other way around once again.
So just to ramble on, maybe this will, still, be the first
time in history when a deep (destructive) recession is
avoided.
Next time maybe the skyhigh bubble will be kept slightly
lower?? (that's probably more difficult??)
Ilmarinen.
P.S. main thing the difference constructive-destructive
competition, similar to how "wall street" should avoid
a company being "wasted" in (private) bancrupcy, instead
"merged" before things are that bad. (the question on
what will happen to small operators, considering "national pride" and all that...jazz)
P.P.S it's friday, in tough, critical times... luckily
two days to monday! |
