Top Telecom Turkeys of 2009
Following the lead of my esteemed colleagues over at our sister publication in FierceWireless, I thought I would take my carving knife out and take my own stab at the top telecom turkeys for 2009.
Besides the obvious down economy--a factor that Tom Nolle, President of CIMI Corp. told me late last year is really driving telcos to put projects on hold--there's plenty of meat to go around the telecom industry debacle table in the wireline side of the house.
While I am sure you will come to me with others and will balk at my current selections, there are many highlights that are worth noting: the bankruptcy of one of the largest telecom vendors; a raft of suicides at one of Europe's largest telcos; an independent telco struggling to swallow Verizon's old lines; and, then the former high-flying Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio trying to get out of jail.
Okay, so it may be a bit undiplomatic to point out the faults of others, but perhaps the blunders of these companies should serve as a cautionary tale for others that are considering similar moves in the industry. --Sean
Comments
Posted by Johan Kok | December 3, 2009 - 6:37pm
Agree with Acaciatech on Nortel - Nortel never saw, nor adapted to the mobile market - I presume being situated in Canada (close to US) it was looking at the US market and completely missed the standardisation and integration that happened via GSM in the rest of the world. - Most likely also the reason for the lag (still) in the US market with regards to mobile based broadband....
Posted by Johan Kok | December 3, 2009 - 6:33pm
The down economy had little effect on the overall Telco market - only places like Rwanda outside of the Northern American markets were really affected. Their reason being totally dependend on foreign aid. - As for the rest barring one operator (also not because of the economy) we saw growth with all our clients - quite a few hitting records......
Neither did we see halts on projects - in fact just an ever growing demand to keep up with technology.
ARPUs at worst constant with a growing number of subscribers.... in some cases already hitting 120-140% of the population in some countries.... where's the old idea of 40% being a saturated market?
We believe that niche market services has a lot of growth to go for....
From our business point of view: Still booming time -- with 300% year-on-year growth up to July, and already gone for another 150% growth in before hitting December.... I do realise certain sectors in the market had a hard time, but was that not due to some inherent problems beforehand? - I would guess that the overall market grew considerably, albeit with less greenfield startup operations. The latter was expected in any event.
If this is downturn, then we should be worried on how to manage growth under normal market conditions :-) (Would love to have that problem)...
Posted by Acaciatech | December 1, 2009 - 9:10am
Nortel Networks woes came as no surprise given the sell-off to American investors back in 00. They were a victim of their own success. No Matter what the vogue accounting or business terms of the year are, it boils down to simplicity. Either keep pace with technology in the market or move at sustainable pace ahead
Posted by Anonymous | November 24, 2009 - 6:14pm
I would think BT's 21CN Class 5 switch replacement program is up there with these, athough i'm not sure this was necessarily an '09 event as it seems to have been going on forever!
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