As predicted, the money teat is out for the rebuilding of Baghdad. The former WorldCom, now MCI again, got a tidy contract to put a wireless network into Baghdad. A sound idea on the face of it; give a country just gutted in a war, a nice wireless network to get the cellphones and pagers working, skipping over the step of running copper from house to house. I can live with that as an infrastructure building operation.
Except WorldCom has only one wireless install under its belt, in Haiti. Other majors, like ATT&T, Sprint and Verizon didn’t even get to sniff the manila folder holding the tender for the job. Not that the winner, or the other potential bidders are any screaming hell at setting up wireless networks, as evidenced by the performance of their networks in the US. Sprint is probably the least inept, at least in the major urban areas, where its coverage is near useable and the bandwidth is almost acceptable.
Why did WorldCom get the contract? I suppose I could spend a few minutes researching the issue, but the short form will suffice: Money. Siemens, or Thompson (Germany or France) didn’t grease the skids enough and the US carriers forgot that rebuilding jobs like this take briefcases of cash to fix in advance. Amateurs. Rookies. Newbie Mistake.
Is this cynical? Not really, it’s just the New Business Paradigm In The Global Economy.
RoadDave 