To: Rick who wrote (43666 ) 6/22/2001 8:22:59 PM From: Rick Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 54805 NYT Op-ed page discusses GG (but without the labels). June 20, 2001 Creative Destruction and the Web By DANIEL GROSS ompanies that supply, build and operate fiber optic networks are burning. Level 3 Communications, groaning under an $8 billion debt load, is cutting 25 percent of its staff. Last week 360networks ominously delayed an interest payment. Nortel Networks of Canada could lose $19.2 billion — yes, billion — in the current quarter. Anticipating rapid growth in demand for high-speed connections to the Internet, these companies aggressively rushed to build global fiber optic networks. It is tempting to view the travails of these companies, coming on the heels of last year's dot-com bust, as further evidence that Internet-related businesses are a spent force. We shouldn't. After all, in virtually every generation, new technologies have arisen that promised to transform the way Americans conducted business, exchanged information and entertained themselves. Each inspired an exuberant investment boom, which led to a glut of capacity, ruinous competition, falling prices for consumers and, ultimately, bankruptcies and consolidation. Most competitors contributed to a technological transformation while failing as short-term investments. Today's boom and bust is merely the latest in a series that have characterized America's phenomenal economic and technological development. The difference? In today's 24-7 environment, the rags-to-riches-to- rags cycle is shorter than ever before. And with the democratized markets, the damage caused by failing investments may be more widespread. Companies like Level 3 Communications and 360networks were formed in the late 1990's. Kicked into permanent overdrive by the stimulant of abundant capital, they manically laid conduits, dug trenches and then buried fiber optic cable under the seas and the prairies: some 39 million miles at a cost of $90 billion. But with only 5 percent of the new fiber being used, prices for network access have plummeted faster than rents for San Francisco lofts. Inventories of routers and fiber optic cable are piling up at suppliers like Cisco and Nortel. And one-time fiber barons are quickly becoming conversant with the arcana of the bankruptcy code. A similar set of circumstances affected the pioneers of the original information superhighway, the telegraph. Soon after Samuel F. B. Morse invented it, hundreds of local service providers popped up like wildflowers. Their network-building efforts in the 1840's and 1850's were financed by the antebellum version of venture capital: government subsidies and hundreds of millions of dollars raised by stock sales. But strikes, competition and the Civil War disrupted business. By 1866, Western Union, with its solid balance sheet, control of patents and 44,000 miles of telegraph wire, became a consolidator par excellence. It absorbed its two remaining principal rivals, and went on to control 90 percent of the telegraph business. The only value in the stock certificates of upstart companies like the Washington and New Orleans Telegraph Company proved to be historical....nytimes.com - Fred