Mexican court rejects wireless auction delay appeal

Let me see if I get this. So their was an auction planned. Then somebody delayed it. Next, somebody else appealed - the delay, I suppose. And now the court rejects the appeal.

So where does that leave the delay? Or the auction?

Prince Charming: You! You can't lie! So tell me puppet... where... is... Shrek?
Pinocchio: Uh. Hmm, well, uh, I don't know where he's not
Prince Charming: You're telling me you don't know where Shrek is?
Pinocchio: It wouldn't be inaccurate to assume that I couldn't exactly not say that it is or isn't almost partially incorrect.
Prince Charming: So you do know where he is!
Pinocchio: On the contrary. I'm possibly more or less not definitely rejecting the idea that in no way with any amount of uncertainty that I undeniably
Prince Charming: Stop it!
Pinocchio: ...do or do not know where he shouldn't probably be, if that indeed wasn't where he isn't. Even if he wasn't at where I knew he was
Pinocchio: That'd mean I'd really have to know where he wasn't.

Off-topic: consultants could make good sell-side analysts

STL recently put forward a popular view of telecoms as a defensive sector in today's financial and economic turmoil. Still, they feel things could change:

The audience at our November event seemed comforted by the appeal which the capital markets currently find in telecom as a defensive sector. However, we also stressed that this is likely to be a fleeting phase, as underlying concerns about the industry’s ability to generate sustainable value will return.

I do not wish to contest STL's views on telco transformation, but I feel something is missing in this (vastly simplified) summary: probably every industry sector faces challenges, some even bigger than those plaguing telecoms. Obviously, financials come to mind, but healthcare, IT, oil & gas and automobiles have a few issues to sort out as well. Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable predicting which sector is set to outperform the others next year.

Somehow, this ties nicely into Kai's (not entirely serious) call for government support of the telco sector, a while ago. Apparently, he was disgruntled over the amount of funds available to bail out financials and the automobile sector that haven't been able to regulate themselves. Why shouldn't FTTH operators get government support as well?

What follows from combining these two posts is that consultants and researchers (instead of Kai's FTTH operators) should step in and replace the sell-side analysts that have lost their jobs over the past few months (by adding investment recommendations to their industry knowledge). Of course, there is some work to be done, but the very fundamental changes of the financial industry could provide industry experts and consultants with a unique opportunity to venture into a new area and serve a new set of customers. They could be much better equipped to serve the buy-side than the average financial analyst. To loosely quote a buddy of mine (who still has his Wall Street sales job):

To say that stocks are cheap, based on current P/E ratios, shows an appalling lack of historic perspective that plagues the sell-side. Low P/E ratios probably imply that earnings projections are still way too high. It should be commonly known: C-level execs are the very last people to update their views to altered market conditions; only to be followed by sell-side analysts.

Off-topic: A Life in Inventions - Tribute to Elliott Carter

A major milestone is hit on December 11: Elliott Carter turns 100 years old - and still composes frantically. Obviously it takes some bending and turning to make this relevant for us at Communications Breakdown. Let's put it this way: being 100 years old and in the forefront of whatever it is you are doing, is quite some lesson to anybody - not least to the incumbent telcos of the world.

Congratulations, Mr. Carter!

There's also a nice Wikipedia way into substantiating the relevance of the past 100 years, both from the perspective of modern classical music and from the world of telecommunications:

• 1908: Elliot Carter was born. Nathan Stubblefield invented his precursor of the wireless telephone.
• 1924: Carter first met Charles Ives.
• 1925: Carter first met Edgard Varese. Invention: TV by Francis Jenkins.
• 1941: Carter composes The Defense of Corinth. Invention: the computer by Konrad Zuse.
• 1946: Carter writes his Piano Sonata. Invention: Mobile Telephone Service at AT&T.
• 1947: Carter writes The Minotaur. Invention: the transistor by William Shockley et al.
• 1948: Carter's Cello Sonata sees the light. Claude Shannon publishes his Mathematical Theory of Communication.
• 1952: Invention of optical fiber by Narinder Singh Kapany.
• 1955: Carter composes his Variations for Orchestra. Invention: video phone by Gregorio Zara.
• 1958: The world's first communications satellite by Kenneth Masterman-Smith.
• 1964: Carter's Piano Concerto. Invention: packet switching by Paul Baran et al.
• 1969: Carter composes his Concerto for Orchestra. Invention: Arpanet at the USDD.
• 1971: Carter completes his Third String Quartet. Invention: e-mail by Ray Tomlinson.
• 1973: Invention of ethernet by Bob Metcalfe et al and the PC at Xerox PARC.
• 1977: Invention of the mobile phone at Bell Labs.
• 1980: Carter's Night Fantasies. Invention: the CD at Philips and Sony.
• 1983: Carter's Triple Duo. Invention: the Internet (TCP/IP) by Robert Kahn et al.
• 1988: Carter's Remembrance for Orchestra. Invention: ADSL at Bellcore (now Telcordia).
• 1990: Invention of the WWW by Tim Berners-Lee.
• 1993: Invention of GPS at the USDD.
• 1995: Carter writes his Fifth String Quartet. Invention of the DVD at Philips et al.
• 1997: Carter writes his opera What Next? Invention of DOCSIS at CableLabs.
• 2001: Carter's Cello Concerto. Invention: the iPod at Apple.

Off-topic: extending life before being swallowed

Of red wine, robots and the Big Bang.


A hundred bottles of wine a day (or maybe just 35 - or even just 4 glasses) may extend your life. According to this New York Times article (free registration is a must for readers of this blog):

• resveratrol (which is in red wine) may activate sirtuins,
• which can trigger a reflex called caloric restriction,
• which makes the (human) body's resources switch from fertility to tissue maintenance,
• which cuts down on aging.
  

And when the body does start to fall apart, you may just download your consciousness into a computer. Rodney Brooks writes on the IEEE pages about a 'singularity period', rather than an event, possibly leading to a techno-utopia. He doesn't provide a timeline, but it won't happen before 2030. Fortunately, humans will always be a step ahead of the machine.


That is, if the earth isn't swallowed by a man-made black hole in the first place. A lot is being written about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The Guardian has now devoted a kind of a portal to the institute.