Telecom.

• Position: Industry Outlook - Panel Discussion - Industry Overview

FOR OUR SECOND ANNUAL telecommunications roundtable, experts in the field helped us get connected with the signals regarding telecom's future in Utah and the nation. Among the topics discussed were the ever-growing areas of competition, the hottest new services slated for 2004 and 2005, and the long-anticipated and still-to-be-determined effects of the Federal Communication Commission's Triennial Review Order released Aug. 21: The order mandates wireless-to-wireless local number portability, currently slated to take effect Nov. 24, and the telecom industry is currently awaiting the FCC's decision on whether portability will also be mandated for wireline-to-wireless numbers.

Participants included AT&T's Jerry Oldroyd; Clark Johnson of Electric Lightwave; Nextel's Marty Clark; Becky Potts of AT&T Wireless; Cricket's Rick Barlow; Nick Gilliland of RMWT Telecommunication Services; Shawn Adamson of XO Communications; Dale Zuelch of Mountain West Telecom; Jim Gledhill of Carrier Sales; and Robin Riggs of Qwest Communications.

Special thanks to moderator Ted Smith, Stoel Rives attorney and a former VP of Qwest for Utah.

What are your general views on the overall health of the telecommunications industry?

CLARK: I'll try to speak generally, but specifically relative to Nextel, our stock price is up threefold from where it was a year ago. We have a differentiated product that is helping that, and I know the industry is looking at some of those differentiations and will be targeting those in the near future. However, in the near term, things are very healthy. With the advent of newer data applications, there is newer turf to uncover and opportunities that I think are glowing for our future

POTTS: I'm really excited about what the future holds, especially involving the things that wireless has actually introduced. I think we're getting into a whole new area of our industry that hasn't yet really been tapped, especially in the United States, and I'm very excited about what the future holds because of the many things that are happening with GSN, GTRS. Anything in the wireless industry is real exciting.

JOHNSON: Electric Lightwave is optimistically awaiting the turnaround just like the rest of us. We have faith that it will definitely be there. Communications is a basic need of all businesses and individuals. It seems that in technology there are a lot of things being tried. Some things are going to work very well. What's it going to be? We're always going to have our core networks to drive the infrastructure, but there are a lot of things that people talk to us about. Can we connect here? Can we do this? Can this work? And it's really exciting for us to see these things as they are brought to us, so to speak. So I'm very optimistic that communications is going to be very exciting in the future. I don't personally know exactly what that looks like.

ZUELCH: We've seen some stabilization in the equipment end of it, which is the bulls of what we do at Mountain West Telecom. There has been interest in voice over IP [VoIP], the hardware end, and in fact this year vs. last year I would say that actual dollars for our organization are probably up about 25 percent in VoIP vs. a year ago. I believe that there has been some consolidation in the hardware aspect of the industry, here in Salt Lake and around the country.

GLEDHILL: Well, we are a sales and service organization, so as the larger telecom companies have cut back their sales force, we picked up. We do a lot with Qwest, AT&T, ELI, XO and everyone else, and we see the need for communications just spiraling and getting greater and better for everyone. Of course, we don't have the shareholders and stock to worry about.

RIGGS: Well, I agree with everyone else around the table that there is cautious optimism in the industry. I'm not sure you could have said that a year ago. For us at Qwest, we have the added challenge of meeting competition, which is growing for us, so that would dictate a lot of about how well we do--of course, that plus the economy.

OLDROYD: Cautiously optimistic is probably the right term to use. The Telecommunication Industry Association is predicting a nine percent annual growth over the next three years, which I think is tremendous relative to where we have been in the last two years; however, I think it is pretty spotty. It's intact in some sectors in the industry and a lot different in others. If you look at emerging companies, for example, early-stage venture capital is still running from the industry as fast as possible. I don't see a lot of institutional investors coming back like they have, and angel financing of capitalization is simply not there yet. There is still a to of overcapacity and that sector is still seriously hurting, but overall, I think the economy has come back considerably.

BARLOW: We believe the demand for personal communication services will continue to be very strong as the different products and...