How do you tell the difference between the companies that are going to survive the shakeout among telecommunications service providers and those that will go belly-up?  Every CEO running a phone company has studied the problem. When some number of customers stops buying, a company's remaining customers often come looking for discounts. It's exactly this double whammy of falling demand and falling prices that has hit telecommunications providers. ... Verizon will survive; Qwest is a definite maybe; WorldCom is on the ropes.  ... Falling prices: $3,000 for an OC-3.  A little over $12,000 for an OC-48.  And dropping fast. I read an article earlier this week that mentioned a price of $2,000 for an OC-3.  Cheap, cheap, cheap!  It wasn't too long ago that all you could get for ~ $2k was a T-1. Only Some Will Survive the Telecom Shakeout  |