By the Editor-in-Chief
With the recent acquisition of Qwest Communications Inc. by Centurylink™, the Monroe, Louisiana based Telecommunications outfit, it brought to a rather historic close, an unforgettable run by one of the most storied organizations in the history of the Pacific Northwest and indeed American Telecommunications.
Qwest, formely US West, has been a standard feature in the Telco space for more than three decades. But the company had struggled for the last ten years as the pace of technological advancements and innovation simply left the company behind.
Ironically though, Qwest had been at the forefront of creative marketing and innovation at the start of the last decade, having pioneered the 'one-stop-shop' model with its bundling of services for its consumer and small business market segments.
Qwest also became the first RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) to provide Standalone DSL (also known as Naked DSL), which was a Digital Subscriber Line internet service that did not require that the customer have a landline phone service.
So what went wrong? Well, simply put, the boom of the late '90s simply engendered a sense of corporate entitlement in the early 2000s (2001-2004) as profits soared while over time, companies (most of them in the Telco space at least) simply forgot to build on the best practices that got them in the black, in the first place.
As we have witnessed the recent mergers (mostly not of equals, hence for all intents and purposes, acquisitions) of some notable companies in the Telco space such as Nextel, Qwest and Cingular, to name a few, the convergence/consolidation in that space (Telco) may in fact present great opportunities for the technology sector, as companies with expertise in management and implementation of M&As from a corporate infrastructure (platform convergence to include ERP, CRM and other architecture) and business intelligence (strategy and innovation) perspective, may be counted on to provide invaluable intellectual and other capital, as needed, to ensure a much softer landing for the new reality.
As we have witnessed the recent mergers (mostly not of equals, hence for all intents and purposes, acquisitions) of some notable companies in the Telco space such as Nextel, Qwest and Cingular, to name a few, the convergence/consolidation in that space (Telco) may in fact present great opportunities for the technology sector, as companies with expertise in management and implementation of M&As from a corporate infrastructure (platform convergence to include ERP, CRM and other architecture) and business intelligence (strategy and innovation) perspective, may be counted on to provide invaluable intellectual and other capital, as needed, to ensure a much softer landing for the new reality.
These sure are changing times and in my next piece, I will be delving into some of the challenges and opportunities that are sure to emanate from the pervading 'spatial turbulence' in the Telco space and its adjacencies.
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