In telecom's once-heralded and now-reviled heyday, the more pragmatic observers of the industry cautioned the rest that the virtually unbridled growth and rampant investment wouldn't last. They were proved right, of course, ultimately to a degree that even they most likely did not anticipate.

However, most of those skeptics still maintained a positive outlook on the technology development and deployment that was such a large part of the industry's growth and optimism. They were rightly concerned about hype and too much funding, but at least until the bubble finally did burst, they remained confident about the core technologies attracting that investment enthusiasm.

As everyone who follows the sector knows by now, the telecom industry fell victim to over-investment, overzealousness and overindulgence. The bottom fell out, and through it fell billions of dollars in money, hope and promise. The industry thus began the arduous climb back to respectability and profitability on which it still toils today.

But something more was lost along the way — something perhaps even more important than money and jobs in the broader industry scheme of things. Confidence in new technology was abandoned outright, replaced by a deep-seated cynicism and an almost malignant belief that nothing new will work or have any kind of long-term place in telecom's future.

Able investors haven't necessarily all adopted that view, because there continues to be development in new technology sectors and even sale and implementation of the new systems they yield. But the cynicism that resulted from the industry's fall usually ends up overwhelming that progress. It pervades and, in due course, usually extinguishes any glimmers of optimism that attempt to emerge in telecom.

Look to any emerging technology sector for proof: IMS as a way to achieve convergence. WiMAX as the long-awaited success in broadband wireless access. The MVNO movement in mobile wireless that could make any retailer a wireless provider. Traditional wireline carriers' designs on video service. FTTP. Every bit of progress made in those and other technology areas is balanced and eventually snuffed out by the pervading cynicism that makes the one-time visionaries of telecom unwilling to invest in and experiment with new things.

Who knows what it might take for telecom to shed the pervasive negativity that now characterizes it. Perhaps nascent regulatory efforts and investment incentives will help or maybe it's just a matter of more time and distance from the failures of the recent past. Clearly, though, something must be done to expel what has become an almost insidious distrust of innovation throughout this industry.