Le telecom e il Governo - gzibordi ¶
By: GZ on Lunedì 25 Febbraio 2002 13:52
Bush e Berlusca (per nostra fortuna) sono il punto di oscillazione estrema sul lato del liberismo più spinto
------------------------------------------ecc...ecc...
è sempre bello vedere la dialettica (e persino poesia dialettale)
questo forum verrà presto notato
per un programma TV di attualità
ora che lerner e santoro perdono colpi
Ma visto che le borse sono troppo deboli
per comprare e non franano al punto di dover vendere
suggerisco a fini borsistici di leggere
qualche cosa come il pezzo ultra-negativo
su Barron's di due dei maggiori esperti americani
e che spiega anche il ruolo
tremendamente negativo della regolamentazione della FCC del 1996 in america
che ha praticamente finito per affossare le grandi telecom nazionali a favore delle CLEC
locali e ha imposto tariffe massime per le grandi
Per l'America l'unica speranza è che che entro fine anno si riesca a modificare
la regolamentazione del 1996
Qualunque notizia in questo senso sarebbe
un segnale positivo per le telecom
(ma non si prevede niente prima di fine anno)
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Q: You've both been critical of the government's role in bringing this all about. How can the government remedy this?
Cleland: Chairman Powell at the FCC understands the problems and has a series of broadband deregulation rulings that are coming down the pike this year. The government is trying to reverse past FCC deflationary policies. But it is slow going. Essentially the government forced overall industry revenues down at an alarming rate. The government tried to create a CLEC industry and that has largely vaporized and cost investors tens upon tens of billions of dollars.
Q: Clearly, this has been bad for investors, but it seems pretty good for consumers.
Cleland: It is a two-edged sword for consumers. It is good in the sense that consumers are getting more wireless communication and more data cheaper. But it also results in lower quality because companies don't have the revenues or the profit to deliver high quality. It is troubling for industry innovation because when there is this much competition and trends are this negative, companies pull back on research and development. Potentially, we are about to lose a generation of technology and innovation. Consumers don't benefit from that.
Q: Yet it's in a company's interest to innovate, to differentiate and get some pricing power.
Cleland: If you have resources, if you have cash flow and your model is afloat you will still invest in R&D. But long-distance and the data-backbone transport companies and CLECs don't have enough money.
Whyman: The other element here is content. The reality is, most content holders are still terrified that if they put their prized content in a Web-accessible form it will immediately get replicated in a million copies all over the world. That's the other side of the problem of why people aren't buying broadband and why we aren't seeing demand in it: It is not compelling enough. Why isn't it compelling enough? Because the companies that are sitting on the content vaults aren't willing to open up those vaults because they don't have enough confidence that they will be able to keep control of it. I don't see a simple fix in sight.
Q: Let's talk about specific companies. Scott, where do you stand on WorldCom at this point? You were early in saying the Sprint deal wouldn't go through and they would need to find a new strategy.
Cleland: With its tracking stock MCI, WorldCom has played a shell game to try and create the illusion of growth. In a sense, tracking stocks are a very sophisticated form of misdirection. With one shell they say the WorldCom tracker last year grew at a 7% revenue growth rate. And with the MCI tracker, they pay a dividend, and show revenues declining at a 15% rate. They don't want you to add those trackers together, because then you would realize that WorldCom-MCI combined grew at a negative 1% rate of revenues in 2001. That was in an environment where the Bells grew revenues 2%-7%. It is hard to be a growth stock when your revenues are growing negatively.
Q: MCI is yielding about 40%, isn't it?
Cleland: The point we are making is that the tracking stock is the worst form of pro-forma reporting -- designed not to give you the entire picture. One must add the two together in order to get the numbers that are most important.
Q: Isn't this true of Sprint Fon and PCS Group as well?
Cleland: Yes. And AT&T is proposing to do a tracker of its consumer business. Anytime people see a tracker they should think of pro forma and they should ask themselves what it is they're being misdirected from looking at. There is a reason behind a tracker. And the reason is to divert attention from the negative to the positive. People still look at the trackers separately. They are making a big mistake. These are the same companies with the same networks and the same operations and financial wherewithal.
Q: What about Qwest? I noticed you've left that off your list of Bells. Last year, you ranked it up there with the others.
Cleland: Last year, we thought Qwest Communications and Sprint were prime takeover targets. We changed our view when we realized no one was willing to pay a premium for them because they don't offer any growth. They offer enormous business risk and huge debt liability. It doesn't matter how attractive the takeover is if no one is willing to take over the risk. The real troublesome issue for the nation is that Qwest and Sprint are the country's No. 4 and No. 5 local phone companies. They provide a lifeline telephone service to roughly 15 million American households. Those types of companies aren't supposed to be at financial risk.
Q: Great -- all the utilities are going bankrupt.
Whyman: In dark moments you start thinking about recession cartels. But that's extreme.
Cleland: The real mistake the government made in the Telecom Act of 1996 is that they thought their policy for competition had only upside. They tilted the regulatory playing field toward CLECs and their lousy business models by forcing incumbents to subsidize them. Now we are paying the piper for that very unwise regulatory policy of the late 1990s.
Q: What is your outlook for the economy, given your views on telecom and tech?
Whyman: If you could know any one number before you invest in technology, you would want to know how much corporations would spend on technology, including hardware and software and communications equipment. Historically, over the past 20-plus years, it has grown 11%. In 2001, for the first time since 1974, it shrank a whopping 10%. In 2002 we will get a cyclical improvement and some stabilization, but it is another year of weak growth. We are looking at roughly 2%-5% growth in corporate spending on hardware and software and telecom equipment, and that's half trend. Then you look throughout the economy and you say, "Who buys all this stuff?" Of the 62 sectors in the economy, the three largest ones, financial services, communication services and wholesale distributors, make up exactly half of all spending on tech and telecom and those three are in trouble. From the demand side, it is very hard to come up with a compelling scenario. So the short answer is, the economy stabilizes. We return to very weak growth. But it is another year of sub-trend growth. This is not a growth environment.
Q: Isn't there anything positive to say? Anything on the horizon?
Cleland: The FCC authorized a truly revolutionary technology on Valentine's Day, ultrawide band. This is Star Trek stuff. It has enormous and wide-reaching applications. This technology has been buried in the FCC for three years. And Chairman Powell and Commerce Secretary Evans twisted arms to get it to market. Because it is so revolutionary and it is so different from normal wireless technology, we think most people simply aren't aware of it or don't get it.
Q: How does it work, and how would it affect an average consumer?
Cleland: It allows for all sorts of consumer applications such as monitoring and remote sensing.
Whyman: But the big application is for short-distance wireless devices because it has a lot more bandwidth and uses much less energy. You can conceive of wireless local laptops that you can walk around the office with.
Q: Does it threaten existing technology?
Cleland: It is a very disruptive technology. Blue Tooth and 80211B are at risk. I can't believe I got that acronym right.
Q: That was good. But how is this good for the industry right now?
Cleland: The positive is, this is a new technology that will have a very steep demand curve. However, it is going to take awhile to roll it out. And while the FCC authorized it, it's taking a cautious stance, because of concerns by competitors that this new technology would create dangerous interference. Competitors like Qualcomm and Sprint PCS didn't want it to get out of the regulatory crib. It is a whole new technology that will trigger a whole new set of applications we haven't thought about before. It's a better technology and better standard and it will open them up to more competition.
