"A separate study released last week by Information Week magazine said that tech workers' pay had dipped by 11 percent, to $63,000, compared with a median compensation package of $71,000 last year. It's the first time in the five-year history of the study that employees with technology skills reported lower wages, the trade publication said."

washingtonpost.com: For Techies, Some Hope Amid Gloom

Verizon will survive; Qwest is a definite maybe; WorldCom is on the ropes. ... Falling prices: $3,000 for an OC-3. A little over $12,000 for an OC-48. And dropping fast.

I read an article earlier this week that mentioned a price of $2,000 for an OC-3. Cheap, cheap, cheap! It wasn't too long ago that all you could get for ~ $2k was a T-1.

Only Some Will Survive the Telecom Shakeout

"If a well-regarded general-interest site churning out daily, consistent, professional-grade content can convince only 1% of its readership to part with $30 a year, you might as well take the Web subscription model out behind the barn and distract it just long enough to put the shotgun to the back of its head. "

This is a cynical view. The financial specifics are interesting.

This is just funny: (from Salons Premium page)

Salon Premium: It just gets better
Arianna Huffington explains why you should subscribe.

Let it be known that I will never buy anything promoted by Arianna Huffington...

Salon.com's subscription model.

"If Delaware really wants to solve its problem, maybe it's time for it to rethink its tax policy. "

Most corps are Delaware Corps. Industrial Memetics is a Delaware Corp. If Delaware changed its policies, as Salon suggests, this would have a broad impact. There are a lot of reasons to incorporate in Delaware that cannot be summed up purely as "tax evasion."

Salon.com Technology | Huge corporation, can you spare a dime?

MCI unveiled a plan Monday that for the first time gives residential customers unlimited local, local toll and long-distance calls for $50 a month. The goal is to gain local market share. MCI is heavily in debt and under SEC investigation. Analysts say the plan is proof of big changes in the way phone companies bill. "We are moving to a flat rate, or subscription-based, all-you-can-eat world."

How's this for a trick? Since billable minutes are falling off fast for all the carriers, MCI pondered, "Right now, the market wants to see growth in the number of minutes used. How can we get customers to make more LD calls?" and came up with the reply, "Let's go flat rate!" So they charge each customer a little more than the average one pays already, and figure they break even financially, but they get to say "minutes are up 15% this quarter!" in the next report.

One risk (which they must have foreseen) is that only the chattiest of their customers will take them up on the offer, and revenues will still go down even as minutes stabilize or climb up. So long term, it still doesn't pay the bills, but it could make for some nice weasel-words in the next quarterly report ...

According to a Knight-Ridder wire story, MCI's plan is a reply to a similar deal just announced by AT&T. MCI's marketing director: "It was important for us to come out as the first nationwide local phone company. We also wanted to step out of the price-driven commodity market of long-distance." Analysts say that if customers respond, then voice service will quickly evolve into an (unprofitable) all-flat-rate business.

The above is from JLM. I'll add that research has shown that consumers will pay more in aggregate for flat rate services then for metered services. I won't argue the likely reasons for such a decision, other than to say that this sort of pricing scheme makes the most sense in an environment where most long distance consumers are individuals and not businesses. I'm not sure what the current break down actually is. However, one wonders why they can't simply offer flat rate residential long distance and metered commercial long distance. The market is used to having different prices for local phone services already.

MCI offers unlimited calls

"The heavily unregulated DSL market has been virtually monopolized and the cost of DSL has gone up in the U.S. from $39 to $49. It costs $29 (US) in Canada for the same service. Right now, Canadians are twice as likely and South Koreans are four times as likely to have broadband access than Americans. Thats pitiful. "

Contact TISPA

"the study analyzed the Billboard Top 200 charts -- reflecting weekly album sales -- from 1991 to 2000. Over the 10-year period, they found a 31.5 percent increase in the number of different artists on the Top 200, indicating that more new artists are hitting the charts than ever before, pushing established musical acts from the charts or keeping them from hitting the charts at all.
The biggest change occurred from 1998 to 2000, when there was a 10 percent increase in the number of different artists who hit the Billboard 200.
The researchers link the trend to rapid growth in the number of Internet users -- from 3 million to 116.7 million -- over the past 10 years and the emergence of music-sharing services such as Napster, which has led to widespread online music sampling and piracy. "

Internet use causes fewer rock super stars

The telecoms sector continued to get slammed as investors worry that the slowdown may have more to do with industry fundamentals than with the economy. ... "People were thinking that the slowdown in the revenues and the lines were recession-related. (But) upon closer [inspection], they're starting to focus in on the likely secular declines in the revenue growth coming out of the basic local services companies. It really shouldn't come as a big surprise. The basic telecommunications service companies are facing some very challenging fundamentals."

Telecoms Stocks Fall as Hopes Dashed

"You have to be careful if you start to smoke your own stuff and believe you are the only one who can build a great search engine."

Google's Toughest Search Is for a Business Model

Talk about a high-performance engine! Adelphia should get out of the communications infrastructure business and start doing PR full time!

At 7:11 pm on Tuesday, this story hit the AP wire:

A shareholder lawsuit accused Adelphia of misleading stockholders about its financial condition by failing to disclose billions of dollars of off-balance-sheet debt ... accusing the company ... of issuing misleading statements. ... stock dropped from $20.39 on 3/26 to $13.12 on 4/1 to $11.83 on 4/2 ... incurred off-balance-sheet debt of $2.3B ... announced Monday its annual 10-K financial report was being delayed to review accounting for the debt.

Understandably, this news must have ruffled feathers at the company. So, after some poor soul no doubt spent a long night at the office, this story hits the wire at 12:47 am Wednesday morning:

Cable Company Keeps Small - Town Touch

Adelphia may be the sixth-biggest cable television company in the country, but founder John Rigas and family stay close to their roots in rural Coudersport, Pa., where Adelphia began 50 years ago as a $300 venture ...

The company has kept its headquarters in Coudersport, about 70 miles north of State College near the New York border, where Rigas, his sons and their families are familiar faces.

A town resident said: "The sons grew up here, they went to high school with us Their homes are right here. If we pass on the street, we say hello. ... John Rigas came to my dad's funeral and two of his sons came. That's the kind of community it is."

... gradually built their community antenna association into a larger cable operation ... They named their company "Adelphia," Greek for "brothers." ... branched out into sports properties ... John Rigas reached a handshake deal to buy the Pittsburgh Pirates ... only to have a California businessman outbid him ... family is involved in local affairs ... a member of the Rotary Club ... and the local hospital advisory committee ....

It's too bad this strategy won't work for Global Crossing ... but it'd be a hard sell to convince people that a firm with the word "Global" in its name has any of sort of small-town charm.

Spotlight Falls on Adelphia Cable