When you travel internationally you realize just how fragmented the telco industry is even though you have giants like Verizon, BT and others. Given the regulated nature of the business, cross-border issues are more thorny. So you get scenarios like a giant like AT&T's global wi-fi plan offers only 2 hotspots in all of Argentina! And Skype has more of a global brand recognition than much bigger companies like Sprint or Vodafone.
CIOs report the same frustration when they seek to do global WAN and other telecom related deals. And it is even more fragmented when you ask telcos to bid for other IT infrastructure areas.
So I was pleased to hear glowing comments from a client about how Orange had recently packaged and priced a global deal.
I am also glad to see T-Systems (the enterprise outsourcing group at Deutsche Telecom) hook up with Cognizant to bring globalization to their IT services. It should give European companies a chance to see the firm's capabilities that have made it one of the fastest growing offshore firms in the US market.
Both from individual consumer and corporate perspectives, it is good to see telcos gradually become more global in a number of dimensions
