ABSTRACT
Carriers have an image problem: they are widely perceived to be bureaucratic, slow-moving monoliths. The apocryphal sales pitch “Buy from us, we suck less” was attributed to an executive from a North American carrier. Many industries have to innovate or die. Products have a limited lifespan and are then replaced by something quite different. Product turnover churns the organization and breaks up sedimented structures. Process-intensiveness means that carriers depend upon a staggering number of routine and interlocked processes. Carriers are meant to be stable organizations, and with a conservative product set, they achieve this stability by a deep attachment to the processes they’ve got. Even discontinuous technology change such as the transition from analogue to digital switching, and from Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy to Synchronous Digital Hierarchy transmission, left many processes unchanged. Carriers were aware in the late 1990s that the Internet was becoming a new market, and many of them set up divisions to carry Internet traffic.
