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| Plate techtonix (6) |
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| Monday, 21 May 2007 | |
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Globalisation is an easy (if expensive) resort for telcos in search of growth when organic options are exhausted. Now, just how short can their memories be in this regard?
“Elephantine in all but memory”, to quote playwright Tom Stoppard, is a fairly neat way of describing most major telcos. They are incapable of ‘tip-toeing’ into anything. In the 1990s this manifested itself in an overseas acquisition spree not unlike the colonial land grabs of the 18th and 19th centuries. This ended badly: the finance required for such global venturing was derived in large part from solid streams of fixed and mobile revenue (now gone and lost forever allied to burgeoning share prices due to the impressive market perceptions of the dot.com era. The result was corporate machismo at its most priapic. When shares in the tech sector imploded these overseas investments began to look very isolated and very illogical indeed. A few carriers with deep pockets, tolerant shareholders and pole positions in individual overseas markets used the downturn as a chance to consolidate their stakes in non-national PTOs. Deutsche Telekom springs to mind. Most others sought to retreat with a vestigal degree of their dignity intact. This strategy was often made more difficult by the fact that their local business partners were seeking to extract themselves from the situation, too. The movement has legs anew. Spain’s Telefónica has been playing takeover footsie with Telecom Italia, ahead of and then following a trail blazed by AT&T of the US in its attempt to but into the Rome-based basket-case. Elsewhere, BT recently bought assets from Comsat in Latin America as part of a fudgy notion of extending its ‘global footprint’. As in the 1990s, most global investment plays in 2007 are a flouncy mix of destiny, desperation and defence. Indeed, there is a ready reckoner to apply to all these new transborder deals. Here are its poles in summary: • overseas POTS; • overseas second carriers; • managed global services; • managed wireless; • managed IT. Remember this when an over-exuberant telco starts preening its transborder feathers in a market near you. Ask only what it is really trying to do, Look up the word 'priapic' and you'll get an idea. On Friday, to complete this series, we’ll put together a 10-point plan on how Plate Techtonix can be shaped in the ICT world to turn cataclysm into opportunity. Most of it is quite bloody. Jim Chalmers |
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