Finance Commentary Archive
:: Finance Commentary Archive ::
Capex with a capital C
By: By John M. Celentano, Skyline Marketing Group
Capital expenditures (capex) remain the most closely watched metric for determining the direction and level of investment that telecom carriers are making in network equipment and services. The problem is that capex is never linear in its behavior. Predicting what the carriers are likely to spend on their networks is a black art, at best...
Adieu, Arun Sarin
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin is retiring. After five years as head of the world’s most far-flung operator, the man believes his job is done. He may be right...
Five things you need to know about Sprint/Clearwire
By: By Rich Karpinski
The long-rumored deal is done. Sprint and Clearwire today formally combined their WiMAX businesses, aided by investments from Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Here’s what you need to know...
The numbers don't lie
By: By Carol Wilson
Earnings reports are a study in spin -- read a press release announcing even the most dire earnings, and you'll be hard-pressed to find the gloom and doom among the highlighted statistics...
Devices drive data usage, operators find
By: By Rich Karpinski
A funny thing happened on the way to the 3G mass market: carrier data revenues turned out to be just as dependent -- if not more dependent -- on the devices they offer than the availability or even the speeds of the data services themselves...
CTIA: The end of an era
By: By Sarah Reedy
LAS VEGAS--The Smartphone Summit kicks off CTIA today, but one company noticeably absent from the excitement is Motorola. Just one week after announcing the planned spin off of its handset business, Motorola will most likely keep a low profile the entire week of the wireless conference following its CTIA preview telebriefing last week, which was largely drowned out by the noise of the planned business separation...
Trade show raids
By: By Ed Gubbins
Patent infringement is really getting out of control in this business. Last week in Hannover, Germany, the CeBIT trade show ended with a police raid on the exhibit hall prompted by rampant claims of intellectual property theft...
Survival of the fittest -- Carriers need partners not vendors
By: By Robert W. Pullen, Tellabs
Providers need more today than just high-quality infrastructure. In today’s climate of “what have you done for me lately,” the litmus test for choosing an infrastructure vendor is not only equipment, but also services that deliver quantifiable benefits to the top and bottom lines...
Telco transformation: A do-or-die proposition
By: By Kermit Ross, Millennium Marketing
For the telcos, the 20th century was all about growth. A telco’s size was measured by its access lines. Its mission was to add more lines every year. But the 21 century offers a different challenge...
Priority at a price
By: By Sarah Reedy
SMS text messages have become as pervasive as cell phones themselves. Once reserved for younger users keen on digital shorthand, it is now an accepted mode of communication for parents, businesspeople and users of all ages. In the past two days alone, SMS text has been making headlines for its growth potential, new applications and ability to unveil a scandal...
Q&A: Gillis Cashman, MC Venture Partners
By: By Ed Gubbins
After eight years at MC Venture Partners, Gillis Cashman made partner this month at the venture capital firm, which focuses on technology and communications startups. Cashman, who sits on the boards of Cavalier Telephone, Zayo Bandwidth and cable player Baja Broadband, spoke with Telephony’s Ed Gubbins about the future of CLECs and current economic trends shaping the telecom service provider space and investment in it...
Embarq’s third act begins
By: By Ed Gubbins
I had the pleasure of spending some face time with Dan Hesse this summer for an in-depth and exceedingly well-written profile I wrote about him and Embarq. Hesse has a warm, easy smile, but he is frighteningly tall...
The rise and fall of cable
By: By Carol Wilson
This year's stumble by cable stocks, which are down about 25% even after last week's FCC-inspired rally, continues to puzzle me. The industry has done a far better job than its chief rivals, the telcos, of delivering triple-play bundles to the majority of its customers...
Beyond our control
By: By Ed Gubbins
Since we reported that Houston’s Optical Entertainment Network had abruptly and mysteriously discontinued service earlier this month, many of you have contacted me wanting more information on what had happened to the company. Get in line...
SureWest East
By: By Ed Gubbins
Two weeks ago I reported on SureWest Communications’ stated desire to scale its fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) business through acquisition. At the time, I offered the only potential candidates I could think of, under time pressure, that might appear on SureWest’s short list...
Sign sign nowhere VeriSign
By: By Tim McElligott
I don't know which day VeriSign will come to rue the most: the day it hired Stratton Sclavos or the day it decided to divest most of what they have acquired over the last five years, including its telecom-related assets. Tough call...
Tough choices at Alcatel-Lucent
By: By Ed Gubbins
In her book Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, recounts the way she helped cement the cultural integration of one of telecom's largest acquisitions using nothing more than a pair of cowboy boots and a knot of men's socks...
Sixty-five percent
By: By Ed Gubbins
TheStreet.com is reporting that AT&T has hired Goldman Sachs to explore a possible acquisition of EchoStar (or its DISH satellite video business), a hypothetical that has been the subject of much rumor and speculation in recent weeks...
Disney: On second thought
By: By Tim McElligott
I wonder how many people left good, solid jobs to take a ground floor opportunity with Disney to work on its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) business with high-in-the-sky, apple-pie hopes. I'll bet they believed the risk-reward factor leaned heavily in their favor. Who could blame them?...
Post-merger troubles
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Alcatel-Lucent’s smooth integration looks like it may have hit some rocky terrain. The Financial Times reported last week that Alcatel-Lucent is losing its massive UMTS contract with AT&T to Ericsson, which, if true, would be quite a surprise...
Is Navteq just the beginning?
By: By Kevin Fitchard
If anyone was still thinking Nokia's Ovi strategy was a joke, then Nokia just plopped $8.1 billion on the table to quell any doubts...
It's painless
By: By Tim McElligott
Is doing the honorable thing always the right thing to do? What does it mean to have honor anyway? ...
The old new guy
By: By Ed Gubbins
Edward Mueller seemed to be having a good time during the conference call yesterday in which he was introduced as the new chief executive officer of Qwest Communications...
Ground floor
By: By Ed Gubbins
When people talk about “getting in on the ground floor” of something, they’re usually talking about a rare and rewarding opportunity, as if the ground floor wasn’t the same one used by everybody else forever afterward to enter the same plac...
Nokia Siemens Naperville
By: By Ed Gubbins
During their second-quarter earnings conference call today, Tellabs executives understandably didn’t say much about recent rumors that the company is entertaining acquisition offers from Nokia Siemens Networks ...
