Signs of Life

It's easy for telecom survivors to be jaded about data suggesting that the market is on the road to recovery. The industry has hitched its hopes to such reports before, and yet the pain persists. With that caveat in mind, this week I came across three different reports of reversals of problematic telecom trends. None of these, taken by themselves, is enough to set champagne corks popping. But taken together, these reports offer support for the notion that a bottom may be forming.

First came news from from market research firm TeleGeography that long-haul bandwidth prices are stabilizing, and even rising in some markets. This uptick follows years of steep decline in bandwidth pricing.

Meanwhile, Sage Research's monthly survey of 104 Internet service providers found a modest uptick in sentiment about industry business conditions. More than half of the respondents reported that their revenues were up slightly since July.

Finally, there was the welcome news telecom layoffs are tapering off, as tracked by the executive placement firm Challenger Grey & Christmas, which found that the number of layoffs in the telecom sector fell 52 percent from the second to the third quarter this year. As it turns out, September 2002 had the fewest telecom layoffs since November 2000.