isen.blog

Several astute readers of isen.blog have written to point out yesterday's Wall Street Journal article, Heavy Toll: Phone Industry Faces Upheaval As Ways of Calling Change Fast" (paid subscription required). One way or another, they note that I've been writing for years about what the WSJ has just now breathlessly discovered. Among other things, the article says

Across the nation, the business models that have worked for decades for Verizon and other phone giants are showing signs of unraveling . . . "Our industry and our business is going to change more in the next five years than it has during the last 20 combined," says Duane Ackerman, the chairman and chief executive of BellSouth Corp.

It is mostly right about the current trend, but woefully short on identifying or explaining the underlying dynamics.

Here's another read-it-here-first: the most recent oil crisis, which has been triggered by strong demand from China at a time when global oil production is peaking -- you read about *that* here first too, see my SMART Letter #66 from January 16, 2002. The war in Iraq might be a secondary stimulus, but the long term trend is clear --we are at the beginning of the end of the age of oil.

In telecom, I expect we will see continued struggles of the Bells and their suppliers. There is no "turning the corner" without significant political repression aimed at keeping users separated from technology.

In oil, I expect we will see it down in the $30s again in the near future, and if that happens, I'll be a buyer, because it will surely be temporary. And I 'spect there's hundred dollar a barrel oil in the not-too-distant too. If you have not read Kenneth Deffeyes' book _Hubbert's Peak_ yet, you may not understand.