Frankston Refutes Some Arguments Made in The Economist "Telecoms Crash" Cover Story
Bob Frankston has published a very thought-provoking opinion piece on his web site called The Economist, the Internet, Telecom, and the Dow. It's intended to identify some aspects of a recent cover story in The Economist that Frankston considers fallacious.
It is a tragic misunderstanding since the woes of the Telecom industry are seen as representing the state of the economy rather than the collapsing of a facade of a Potemkin industry. In 1900's there was a real telecommunications industry just like in the 1800's when there was a thriving business in transporting ice from frozen lakes to warmer climes. Just as refrigeration put an end to the need for buying ice, the Internet has put an end to the need to buy telecommunications services from others. We just need commodity connectivity.
Frankston's argument, that long distance telephone service as we know it is an artificial creation of government regulators, is completely different from the points made in The Economist article "Too many debts; too few calls". We pointed to the Economist article in a recent story on CTDATA.com, so we thought we ought to point out a strong counter-argument.