GTE enters the cable business. GTE is purchased and becomes Verizon. Verizon sells its cable business. Verizon is now re-entering the cable business using fiber.

GTE purchases BBN for $616 million. GTE makes an offer for MCI. GTE is purchased and becomes Verizon. Verizon sells BBN/Genuity for $60 million. Verizon purchases MCI for $6.7 billion.

Section 271 rules notwithstanding, an outsider looking in would have to wonder where Verizon has been hiding its strategic plan and whether it has a gigantic pot o' gold somewhere that no one knows about. This makes me long for a secret peek at the Verizon strategic plan (buy/sell/buy at a higher price, and make the Street happy for three months at a time), but that's too easy a target.

The fact is, the same questions come with the SBC/AT&T, Cingular Wireless/AT&T Wireless and Sprint/Nextel acquisitions, and these generate the even more important question: if this pot o' gold exists, why are these companies not upgrading their back office operations rather than simply placing lipstick on the large farm animals to make them look better (i.e., simply changing the presentation to Web-based and not overhauling the Web presence and/or basic processes)?

With the possible exception of Sprint/Nextel, all of these merger situations inherit a major back office nightmare into what is already not a pristine back office environment. Verizon is already on record as recognizing MCI's 170 different billing and 180 different ordering systems, and Verizon's own back office is not "the model of a modern major general...." AT&T Wireless' Q4 2003 resulting self-destruction due to the back office upgrade failure during LNP implementation is already on record as being one of the major drivers of the sale to Cingular Wireless.

The back office isn't the sexiest area of the business, but it's the part that retains the customers and partners. Spend the resources on cleaning and upgrading the back offices, please. Just like retail operations, the best performers will be the companies that have devoted their energies to upgrading and maintaining their back office processes and solutions, and their front offices and sales will reflect that effort and thrive on the excellence. It hasn't happened yet in the communications arena, but the first to do so will become the owner of the customers.

Ben Allen Francis is Principal/CIM of Cremos Partners, an independent consulting firm in Lewisville, Texas. E-mail him at bafrancis@cremosp.com.