If any industry has been in deeper trouble than the long-distance sector, it may be the wireless business, where ruthless competition has sent stocks plunging.
The beauty of the situation for the local phone companies is that even as the consumer long-distance sector, in particular, becomes a commodity business, it remains attractive for them.
But so many companies have flocked to the long-distance sector in recent years, and they have deployed so much capital building so many networks and systems that what is happening now is an old-fashioned shakeout.
After nearly five years of headlong deal making in telecommunications, it now appears that the long-term health of the $80 billion-plus long-distance sector depends largely on even more mergers.
Even if the Bell companies are not fully allowed into the long-distance market within a few years, the long-distance sector may still grow so enfeebled by then that no prudent investor would buy the bonds or stocks necessary to raise money for the next generation of communications infrastructure.
The long-distance giants, however, argue that if the Bell companies are being allowed to compete in the long-distance sector, other companies should continue to be able to use the local-monopoly systems of the Bells to enter local markets.
These troubles, which affect the entire telecom sector, include decaying demand for the high-speed Internet infrastructure that telecom companies had been building throughout the late 1990s, as well as falling rates in the long-distance sector caused by growing competition from Baby Bells, start-up telecom companies and cell phones.
But Managing Director, Dr Johannes Graßmann, told TechCrunch it plans to use this cashflow plus the new funding to expand its integration with international carriers, especially in the rail and long distance bus sector.
Long distance shipments by barge, such as between New York and Boston and Baltimore, have been undertaken by private-sector companies, Mr. Ellis said.
Some propriety information will be transferred from Westinghouse to the public-sector Indian Nuclear Power Corporation, but the signing of a reactor contract remains a long distance away.
