"There are two groups involved here, incumbents who are bidding to get extra spectrum and new entrants to the market," explained Ashish Basil, partner of telecom practice at Ernst & Young.
Mohit Rana, partner and vice president for telecom practice at A.T. Kearney, says, "The next big action in telecom will be in broadband and it will happen within a year's time".
"The expense of providing long distance no longer has anything to do with the service itself, it has to do with the marketing and bookkeeping," says P. William Bane of Mercer Management Consulting's telecom practice.
Purvi Parekh, partner, Olswang Purvi is a partner at Olswang and head of its international telecoms practice.
"Long-distance will be at 5 cents per minute by the end of the year, and that will still be artificially high compared to costs," says Mark Bruneau, head of Renaissance Worldwide's telecom consulting practice.
After joining the media, telecom, and utilities practice, I was shocked to find out that two of the practice directors were essentially fighting over which would get to staff me on their media project.
Although this is the first known time that an African country has collaborated with China to forcibly deport a large group of alleged criminal suspects for telecom fraud, the practice is widespread among various governments and has a long history on the continent.
Spiking the investigation into zero-rating practices by telecoms is the most serious about-face, but it's worth noting the other items going down the memory hole, unannounced, on a Friday afternoon.
They can transfer their existing numbers to Weave and cancel service with other providers in minutes, while getting access to a system that allows them to integrate telecom features with their practice management software.
But in practice, telecoms and IT firms have largely kept out of each other's way.
