As Alex Shalaby, MobiNil's chairman, explained why telecoms matter, "The "teledensity" levels are indirectly correlated with Human Development Index indicators" such as health, education, and adult literacy.
It is unclear what insight Cohen — a longtime real estate attorney and former taxicab operator — could have provided AT&T on complex telecom matters.
"The highest Dutch court for telecom matters gave a final decision," said Paul Waszink, a telecommunications lawyer at NautaDutilh, an Amsterdam law firm that represented Vodafone Netherlands in the operators' appeal.
"The story they're telling is a plausible one," said Daniel Lyons, an associate professor at Boston College Law School who specializes in telecom matters.
With the omnipresence of telecoms, no matter how hard governments try to block information from leaking, the people will always be a step ahead, finding creative ways to get their messages, photos, videos, tweets and Facebook updates out to the world.
She has quietly assembled a national network of tech and telecom advisers, subject matter experts and influencers in the entrepreneurial sphere.
Unlike in telecoms, distance still matters: the farther electricity has to travel, the more is lost in transmission.
To further complicate matters, telecoms operators are reluctant to let Nokia offer services directly to their customers, since they want to do the same.Worse, while dealing with these problems, Nokia has seemed to neglect its main business.
Believe it or not, complex matters of telecoms regulation could become a key battleground in next year's mid-term elections.
But the scandals are just one expression of the general crisis affecting telecom companies no matter how ethically managed.
