The telecoms industry is in a mess. What went wrong, and how can it be fixed? The dotcom crash was merely the warm-up. The telecoms crash is many times bigger. FCC chairman Michael Powell surprised nobody when he declared this week that the industry is facing "utter crisis". The situation is being likened to the Dark Ages. Andrew Odlyzko, Warren Buffett, Bob Metcalfe, ... The industry's hangover has two components: overcapacity and debt. The bigger question is what will happen to America's struggling backbone operators. The mobile industry faces the same challenge. Once the smoke has cleared and the dust settled, expect the telecoms revival to come riding on the back of an unexpected technology that nobody in the industry has yet heard of. Too many debts, too few calls | The Economist | 
