Greetings Pen-'Ellers, Well KGC's response was just fine. No need to pursue anything in my view, however, I found some nuggets or tidbits of Telecom stuff here and there in my notes so I'll pass it along assuming that it might find some interest for KGC.
Tidbits about Telecoms from here and there which includes some dollar figures here and there as well as other comparisons, Gridlock on the superhighway Dec 12th 2002 >From The Economist print edition ..."In America, the telecoms bust of 2000 has wiped out some 500,000 jobs and $2 trillion in (apparent) stockmarket value." ..."But the main source of the problem, we argued, was that most of the newcomers (called "competitive local exchange carriers", or CLECs, in America) had simply failed to do their homework. In particular, the DSL (digital subscriber line) technology that most of them adopted was singularly inappropriate for the task. Apart from causing interference problems, the "2B1Q" algorithm used in America (and the "4B3T" line code used in Europe) to transmit digital signals along a pair of copper telephone lines stumbles badly over "bridge taps" where the wires get spliced." ..."Some readers believed that the CLECs' choice of technology was not entirely arbitrary. "Part of the reason", suggested one insider, "was that most of the CLECs were dependent on 'vendor financing' from the makers of the older line codes-and, as such, were locked into purchases of inferior equipment."" from Pen-L, December 6, Nomi writes in response to a Paul Krugman article, ..."Krugman Bad metaphors make bad policy. Everyone talks about the "information highway." But in economic terms the telecommunications network resembles not a highway but the railroad industry of the robber-baron era - that is, before it faced effective competition from trucking. And railroads eventually faced tough regulation, for good reason: they had a lot of market power, and often abused it. Telecoms are worse than railroads. The railroads built twice as much capacity as was needed, while the robber barons cashed out, over a period of 25 years. In telecoms, 20 times as much capacity was built as was needed, and the cash-out period was 3 years. Railroads were substantially financed by business speculators in Europe. Teleco's by the US public." washingtonpost.com Telecom Sector May Find Past Is Its Future Giant Phone Companies Offer Stable, Well-Funded Option By Peter S. Goodman Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 8, 2002; Page A01 ..."Investors poured large sums of money into telecommunications -- $880 billion from 1997 to date, according to Thomson Financial in New York. But there were not enough phone calls or e-mails to sustain the hundreds of new phone and Internet networks. As that reality emerged in the spring of 2000, the great unraveling began. No one knows how much of the investment -- $326 billion in stock and bonds, plus $554 billion in bank loans -- has been destroyed, but it is surely a huge sum. "Half is as good a number as any," said Richard J. Peterson, chief market strategist at Thomson Financial. At least 63 telecommunications companies have landed in bankruptcy since 2000, according to Bankruptcydata.com." ..."This enormous construction project cycled huge amounts of money through the economy. Local and long-distance telephone companies spent $319 billion building their networks from 1997 to 2001, said RHK Inc., a San Francisco research firm. Mobile telephone companies spent more than $58 billion. The money landed in the coffers of chip-making, software, computer and network equipment companies." ..."From October 1998 to February of this year, the transmission capacity across the Atlantic expanded by a factor of 19. Meanwhile, the price of a leased transmission line dropped to $10,000 a year from $125,000, said Eli Noam, a professor of finance at Columbia University Business School." FEBRUARY 7, 2002 NEWS ANALYSIS:TECHNOLOGY By Alex Salkever Business Week ..."What happened? The numbers in the subsea cable business paint a stark picture. From 1997 to 2001, trans-Atlantic cable capacity increased more than 20-fold, according to TeleGeography, a telecom consultancy. Trans-Pacific capacity soared 40-fold. As so many lines were laid, demand for the services became diluted. Prices for wholesale bandwidth on land and sea plunged apace, falling between 50% and 70% a year. DIVING AND DIGGING. Before Global Crossing launched in 1998, the standard lifetime contract for 155 megabytes of capacity went for $20 million. Global Crossing dropped that immediately to $8 million. By the end of 2001, that same deal drew only $350,000. Long-term contracts no longer hold their allure for customers, who now seek out more flexible one-year or two-year leases." FEBRUARY 4, 2003 Business Week SPECIAL REPORT: ALL-DISTANCE TELECOM Alex Salkever Eating Asia's Broadband Dust Unlike the halting and financially crippling rollout of high-speed access in the U.S., in the Far East it has gone much faster and cheaper ..."GOOD TIMING. The biggest winners, though, may be Asian consumers. In many instances, they get DSL access that's 10 to 20 times as fast as that in the U.S. -- for as little as $20 a month. And they've jumped at the bargain: South Korea boasts the highest broadband penetration of any nation, at 58% of households. " ..."The most telling evidence of Asia's advantage may be what happens next. In the U.S., broadband subscriber growth logged 59% last year as carriers have kept prices high to turn a profit. In Asia, where household incomes are significantly lower, the sign-up rate remains torrid (though from a much lower base). As of last June, China had well under 1 million DSL subscribers. By January, 2003, it had close to 3 million, making it the fastest-growing broadband sector of any country in the world. In Japan, the tally has reached 6 million after only four years of serious marketing -- and may reach 12 million by 2004, according to Yankee Group. " http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/broadcast.html Much Much more available from this site. Telecom statistics The material in this section is drawn from Coffman and Odlyzko (1998, 2000). The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) database provides estimates of telephone traffic for 207 countries for 1997-98, which total 2.5 x 1012 minutes per year. Adding in an estimate for the missing countries brings us to 7.5 x 1012 minutes per year, or roughly 600,000 terabytes per month. Compression would reduce storage requirements by a factor of 6 to 8. The US accounts for about 250,000 terabytes per month, of which roughly a third is modem calls. We have somewhat better estimates for long-distance traffic in the US, including voice, Internet, public data networks and private lines. Table 1: Traffic on U.S. long distance networks in terabytes, year-end 1999. Network Traffic (terabytes/month) US voice 48,000 Internet 10,000 - 16,000 Other Public Data Networks 2,000 Private Line 5,000 - 8,500 To find income figures for Radio Television and Movies go to U.S. Government Statistics BEA NIPA figures Here are some links: http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/index.asp http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/SelectTable.asp?Popular=Y frequently requested tables http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/NIPATableIndex.htm index of key words.
