With the demise of WorldCom amid a flurry of accounting scandals dominating the front pages, and following hotly in the footsteps of the equally spectacular dow... » 

With the demise of WorldCom amid a flurry of accounting scandals dominating the front pages, and following hotly in the footsteps of the equally spectacular downfall of other telecoms giants such as Global Crossing and Lucent Technologies, The Great Telecoms Swindle investigates what's behind a roller coaster ride that is set to continue for some time yet. NTL, France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and numerous other corporate behemoths all face testing and possibly life-threatening times that will demand radical solutions in the coming months. The telecoms story is set to run for some time yet and investors will continue to feel the heat. For a market that, as little as eighteen months ago, amounted to a license to print money, the question what went wrong? must urgently be asked. How could companies like Marconi go from being paragons of virtue to near pariahs embroiled in a welter of financial difficulties in such a short space of time? Are next generation telecoms nothing more than a myth, a triumph of hype over reality? Where's the little boy who's supposed to point out that the emperor has been wearing a new set of clothes? Tracking the rise and fall of the telecoms market from deregulation in the eighties through the explosion of the mobile world, and on to broadband, 3G, and the mobile Internet, the authors give the reader an introduction to what fuelled the boom, where the mistakes were made (by industry players and investors alike), and what the future might hold. Taking the lid off the headlines, The Great Telecoms Swindle reveals and examines the real problems in the telecoms market today. It exposes an industry that is entirely unsure of its own future value proposition, and addresses the difficult question: where does telecoms go from here? «