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About This Series

And what remains

This series is the product of more sleepless nights of research than I can even remember. It is still very incomplete. You are going to see typographical errors, linguistic errors, errors of overstatement and errors of fact. For that I apologise, but I have to get this out before much longer or I fear I will never sleep again.

The events of the past year have affected me deeply. Not even a citizen or a resident of the country where most of these events have transpired, I can still see how they threaten my life and the life of my countrymen. They really scare me. And this goes far, far back in history. These people - the people of greed - have been around for a long time, a very long time. And yet to admit they are there, to accept them and attempt to go on, is impossible. As John Steinbeck would have said, to give in is to accept defeat, and the human race will never accept defeat. And I most assuredly will not.

This story has its roots in the dissolution of the Bell monopoly way back in 1981. When AT&T finally left the local carrier market, a power struggle began, the likes of which has rarely if ever been seen. Upstarts financed by Michael Milken's junk bonds came in to compete with the Baby Bells. The Baby Bells ate one another up like crocodiles. Ted Turner founded and expanded his TBS - all on junk bond money. And the junk bond players still left standing after the Milken crash came back again - at Global Crossing, at CIBC, everywhere. The lessons they'd learned jimmying up the market in the 1980's were put to use again in the 1990's.

It is ironic that these people are not to be regarded as entrepreneurs, but 40 million miles of cable are worthless if no one is there to use them. These foolish and greedy people built built and built, with no regard for what the market needed. All they wanted was to suck up money - which they did by the trillions. They were not good businessmen - they were poor businessmen. And ultimately they screwed the little guy when the bubble burst. People are out of work, pensioners are without their life savings, and these crooks just go on and on and on.

The media and the politicians are starting to bark, trying to profit off the misery, desperate lest the finger of blame point their way. Reporters who once rallied to the buffoons are now quickly forgetting their rash behaviour. Politicians who curried the favour of the buffoons are trying to get rid of their dirty money - if they can, if they are not already all too compromised.

Class action suits have been filed across the continent, and the real circus has yet to begin. WorldCom is not yet in bankruptcy; Qwest is still standing; SBC has not made a move for Sprint, and neither has BellSouth, and no one has made a move for BellSouth either. Warren Buffett, the eternal technophobe, bolsters his friend Jim Crowe at Level 3, and arouses suspicions that he wants to let his good friend Bill Gates buy up the entire Internet. Carl Icahn, that most predatory of corporate raiders, stands poised to eat from the carrion as soon as all the big players are broken into indefensible pieces.

And what will happen with Global Crossing? This monstrous fibre-optic company may go under at any moment - and then the crashes of Enron and WorldCom will look insignificant in comparison. Clearly the worst is yet to come.

Are there any lights of optimism? Yes, but read on to find out what they are. This business sector, which affects the Internet we use every day, which affects our lives, our cottage industries, our jobs, our future and our welfare, is one of the most dishonest to be found anywhere. As Bill Esrey said, telecom has destroyed more investor value than in any other industry, ever.

Thanks to all who have contributed, but especially that doyen of the Internet who shall be known only as Sargon. What Sargon does not know about the telecoms, about Vint Cerf, packet switching, the 'last mile', ATM, fibre-optic cable, and especially the dynamics of the current telecom extravaganza, simply does not exist.

Rick

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