Re: IP: For Telecom Workers, Burst of Bubble

From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 12:10:20 MDT


>From: Harvey Newstrom <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com>

>> For Telecom Workers, Burst Of Bubble Takes Heavy Toll
>> By REBECCA BLUMENSTEIN
>> Wall Street Journal

>> But after a frenzy of spending and hiring, it suddenly became
>>clear in mid-2001 that the Internet wasn't growing nearly as fast
>>as the 1,000-fold annual increases originally predicted. The huge
>>run-up has now been replaced by a merciless ride down.

>> So much money was spent buying telecom gear during the frenzy
>>that there is now seven years' worth of excess inventory, says
>>Lonnie Martin, chief executive of White Rock Networks, a
>>Richardson start-up that is trying to hang on. He values the
>>excess supply at some $160 billion. "That is an awful lot of
>>exuberance to get rid of," he says.

>This echoes what I expressed on the Extropians List. Everybody
>seemed to reject it then, but now it seems to be common knowledge.
>Industry experts are recalculating the growth of the Internet and
>are revising figures. The Internet never did expand at the
>exponential rates that were falsely claimed by large telecomm
>companies. People created companies, created jobs, and laid fiber
>for a demand that was never there. Imagine seven years of future
>growth falsely claimed over the last decade. That's a very large
>percentage of the total claimed growth.

They didn't listen to you or me. ;)

Everybody ran out and started doing the easy part that they thought
was going to make the most money.

They completely ignored the fact that this all depended on the
RBOCs completely re-building their networks with fiber, or at least
fast ethernet, or some other broadband connection.

Which we tried to tell anyone who bothered to listen that we were
NOT going to do until regulations changed.

Regulators, CLECs, and PLECs ignored us, we didn't build it, and
thus we are at the current state. Completely predictable.

I install new equipment and rebuild networks on a daily basis by
the way.

Brian

Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W



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