Letter to a friend from Jean JeanDevos Devos
The only big pending matter for our industry is the large amount of unused capacity in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. And who controls this capacity is now a huge question. VSNL for instance is now by far the biggest capacity owner. What will be the attitude of the big carriers? The answer will come soon.
My Dear Friend November 2005 A New Culture My dear friend, I have really enjoyed meeting you at the Submarine Networks 2005 Conference. Our evening drinks at the Raffles famous “Long Bar” will be remembered. It was a deep pleasure to exchange with you about our business evolution, since we share the same views. We both agree: That week was very, very refreshing indeed and for many reasons. The first one is Asia. Coming from a very depressed Europe, it works like an injection of new blood. It is clear that the majority of the coming year’s projects will happen in Asia. One can sense that the submarine cable planning activity is back there, since “Asia is running out of Bandwidth” (Bill Barney CEO Asia
The third reason: So many new faces which gives me a lot of confidence in the future of our industry. It seems, my friend, that we have emerging industry leaders who are either coming in with fresh eyes or have learned their lessons. We are living a promising transition. The big gurus, with new gospels are gone. The gold conquest is dead! Wisdom and pragmatism are the new words!!
Netcom).” The roar of the Asian Tiger” is a nice music to listen!! The other reason for being so refreshing is the clear emergence of a new industry culture: Let’s build if and when it is needed and let’s do it in a cooperative mode. • “Let’s avoid the sins of the past. Revenue is nice but profit is better “(Gabriel Ruhan CEO GMSL)”. • “We are walking away from non profitable projects” (Bill Marra CEO Tyco Telecom). This new culture is not at all a return to the past. But it is a new determination to stick to the real market needs, not to the speculative ones. There is also a clear message that a submarine system is not a commodity but a key infrastructure which deserves to be properly engineered, properly managed and paid at the right price. The suppliers now understand that cutting their prices further down will not increase the size of the market neither decrease the number of competitors. The owners now understand that the best way to optimize their investment is to co-build.
For the moment our industry is busy at building the missing links of the global network, or at connecting some new players : East Africa , Caribbean islands ,and many more coming such as Maldives, New Caledonia, Tahiti, etc . Soon, new large project will come such as China-US 2 -- Overall a 1 B$ / year business. My dear friend, the coming year will show us if these cultural changes get confirmed. We will soon know if these nice words can be translated into real facts. Wisdom is not the easiest thing to implement!
Jean Devos Jean Devos Submarcom consulting.
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