Steve Phillipson’ Blog

Following my last post, I thought I’d write a few comments about Telecommunications infrastructure competition in Australia, as I feel it isn’t something that is debated enough. The lay-man hears about Broadband all the time, as its the politicians favorite whipping boy at the moment, but there is nothing said about telecomms infrastructure. Well I’m aiming to provide a little bit of insight.

Fact #1 : Telstra owns the vast majority of telecommunications infrastructure in Australia.

Given the history of how Telstra came to being, this should come as no surprise to anyone. There are copper lines, fibre lines, radio-systems, microwave systems, pair-gains systems etc etc. In addition to this, there are Exchanges (those old looking buildings that you’ll find in most suburbs) that bring in all the copper from the surrounding suburb(s) and feed it into “backhaul” which are the lines that run off to other Exchanges. The telecomms network that Telstra owns is a complex beast, make no mistake.

Fact #2 : Competitors do have their own infrastructure

Whilst Telstra has the vast majority, many competitors, such as Optus, AAPT, Primus, Amcom, iiNet, and so on, have begun investing in their own infrastructure over the past 15 or so years. As you’d expect, most of this investment has been in metropolitan areas, purely because the economies of scale that metropolitan areas deliver provides a positive Return on Investment and can help them achieve Fact #3.

Fact #3 : Telecommunications Providers are interested in Profits

Like any company, the goal of telecommunications businesses are to make money (ultimately, to get to a monopoly position). In the case of Telecomms providers, this leads to the scenario that there is very little infrastructure investment in Rural areas of Australia, simply because the money to invest in infrastructure in the rural areas would never be paid back through service charges from the customer, such as line rentals and usage charges.

Logical Conclusion #1 : The Government will always have to put money into providing telecommunications infrastructure to non-profitable regions.

Naturally, no profit seeking business (including, by the way, a fully privatised Telstra – if that ever happens) will choose to invest money into loss-making ventures. Spending $100k (a wild estimate) to invest in a microwave system to a farmer in the back of timbuktu, will never ever see a positive return from the farmers $30 a month line-rental. I’ve written about this very point in my blog on the 2006 Budget announcement.

As a result of this logical conclusion, theres a few forseeable scenarios in relation to infrastructure competition in the future.

Scenario #1 : The Government seeks to create infrastructure competition by giving money to Telecomms businesses, other than Telstra, to build infrastructure

In the interests of attempting to create competition the government hands money to other companies to build infrastructure in the bush. It is quite likely that most of these companies would then set the price at somewhere near Telstra’s, thus resulting in little, or zero net benefit to the end-customer. An even worse scenario would see the company over-estimating the cost, and pocketing many of the government funds, then letting the infrastructure asset they’ve just built simply rot. This has happened already. Refer to http://www.dcita.gov.au/tel/role_of_the_telecommunications_division_and_contacts/networking_the_nation for examples.

Scenario #2 : The Government continues to give money to a wholly-privatised Telstra to provide infrastructure to the Rural areas and mandates that Telstra provide it at low-cost to other telecomms businesses under wholesale arrangements.

Whilst this is feasible (indeed, it is how we currently operate, by and large), the likely outcome is that the amount the government hands over to Telstra each year will increase year-on-year, as a wholly privatised Telstra would play fancy accounting, as well as arguing that increased competition in Metropolitan areas (which is inevitable, as the economies of scale make it justifiable to telecomms companies to invest in their own infrastructure) is reducing their margins, so cross-subsidisation of rural services by higher profits in metropolitan areas would no longer be possible – “please give us more money, Mr. Government!”

Scenario #3 : Government retains ownership of all Telecomms infrastructure (eg. do a share buyback or a company restructure to spin off all non-infrastructure aspects of the business to existing Telstra shareholders, but retain the infrastructure)

This scenario sees the government able to set the playing ground for all players by setting the price and terms of use on infrastructure directly, without the conundrum of being partially private, partially government. The government is able to make profit on the metropolitan infrastructure, which in turn subsidises the delivery and maintenance of rural infrastructure. The government seeks expert advisors (perhaps that have travelled the world and see the trends in broadband etc) on future infrastructure investments, but invests directly into building the infrastructure and then manages it, rather than handing out funds to profit-seeking businesses. 

Scenario #4 : Government retains ownership of Telecomms infrastructure in the Rural areas, but not the Metro areas. Telstra is wholly-privatised, but the Government retains ownership of all rural infrastructure.

This is feasible (albeit technically difficult to implement), however the primary downside to this scenario is that rural infrastructure for telecomms is a loss-making proposition. Without any profit being made on the metropolitan infrastructure, the government is required to allocate higher sums of budget funding to maintain and develop rural infrastructure. Not entirely ideal, but certainly better than Scenario #1 or #2.

So in conclusion of this blog, I believe you begin to see the reasons I am such an advocate for government ownership of telecommunications infrastructure. However, I’m certainly open to debate and would welcome any contrary views!

After reading the transcripts from Sol Trujillo’s National Press Club presentation last week, as well as reading the “Group of 9″ paper titles “Telstra’s FTTN Proposal: Key Policy Issues” (this is a document paid for by AAPT, Optus, Internode, Primus, iiNet etc, to essentially hypothesise on why Telstra should be stopped from investing in a fibre-to-the-node network), I can’t help but think that here we have a CEO in denial, and a “Group of Copycats” tagging along for the ride. What Sol is in denial about is that customers, and shareholders, are not interested in any Fibre-to-the-Node proposals. Please, please, please do no invest $3billion of shareholders money into a network that delivers no tangible benefits over those networks currently available to consumers, such as Cable, ADSL and Satellite. Presumaly the theory of FTTN is that consumers will feel compelled to purchase additional “content” services if the network is in place, thus providing additional revenues to Telstra. But most of these content service are available already with existing technologies. Furthermore, the market doesn’t yet exist for movie downloads (at least not at a price that justifies $3billion expense – ever heard of BitTorrent). The market doesn’t yet exist for IPTV – we’ve got perfectly good free-to-air digital TV that can provide all of IPTV’s benefits, and some (if only the current players would take a bit more effort). And Voice-over-IP (VoIP)? Well the main reason consumers are interested in that is because they want to reduce the amount of money they pay to Telstra.

But Sol – you have got one thing right – you need to focus more on the customer. Have you tried reading your mobile bill lately? Have you picked up a Telstra Data service bill and tried to understand it? Spend more time and money getting the Telstra house in order please.

It has been stated that the government has advisers telling them that its necessary to “Broadband Australia”. Furthermore, they claim it will deliver $12 to $30 billion dollars in economic benefits to the economy. I’m going out on a limb here, but I say that the average consumer is not interested in taxpayer money being spent on Broadband investment. Yes, there are the rural folk that deserve to receive a subsidy for Broadband internet services, because lets face it, no-one’s going to run fibre to their door, or deliver a copper line that isn’t 20 years old and degrading fast and capable of delivering DSL services, or run broadband over the power lines, or setup a satellite dish for a sensible price. Yes – its fair to say that they deserve a helping hand so that they can receive emails from distant relatives faster. Should taxpayers be helping them out to download movies faster? Would these rural folk even be interested in that type of service? The answer is probably no. But still, I don’t have a problem with my taxes subsiding broadband internet for them.

But what about the Metro folk? Should taxpayer funding be used to build parallel infrastructure to the current infrastructure monopoly that is Telstra? History tells us that due to economies of scale, competitors may consider building infrastructure in parallel without taxpayers chipping in, simply because the number of potential customers makes it worthwhile. So sure, spend taxpayer money in the time of your local politicians encouraging competitor investment, but not in terms of writing cheques to these companies! There are plenty of examples of competitor infrastructure (not government subsidised) in the corporate world with metro areas criss-crossed with fibre installations from many different telcommunications players. There’s another example of Optus Cable infrastructure. So in summary – don’t burn our taxes on feeding competitors in areas they would choose to compete freely without government involvement.

But it does beg the question of why the “Group of 9″ could not string together the funding to rollout their own “Fibre to the Node” network, rather than investing money into Consultants reports hypothesising on Telstra’s motives. What is stopping them? Is it possible because history tells them that infrastructure investments don’t provide a positive Return on Investment?

Which brings me back to Sol’s statements that the Telstra Shareholders deserve a reasonable commercial return. Does Fibre to the Node deliver that? Does 3G 850 deliver that? I’m yet to see the evidence, but I stand ready to be convinced – but Sol should be required to provide this evidence before committing the shareholders money.

The issue is not whether Telstra should get an access “holiday” if they invest in FTTN. The question is whether Telstra Shareholders should allow Telstra to invest in FTTN. Will the real Telstra shareholders please stand up ?

Budget 2006 has hit the road running promising, amongst other things, significant tax cuts. Big deal. I’m not going to spout what we’ve all heard already. For me, the Budget raised a couple of interesting questions regarding Telecommunications:

1. Revenue – We all understand that revenue to the government comes primarily from taxes. These taxes are in various forms from the obvious personal income tax, through to the not-so-obvious petroleum fuel excise and customs duties. However, there is the omnipresent “Non-taxation revenue” also. Budget 2006 has $14.5 Billion dollars from “Non-taxation revenue”. “Non-taxation revenue” is defined as “Non-taxation revenue includes grants and subsidies, dividend income, interest income, sales of goods and services, and other.” Can anyone work out how much of that would be dividends from the governments 50.1% shareholding of Telstra? I believe its about $1-2 billion.

2. Expenses – within the Expenses are there is a figure of 8.3 billion dollars on “Infrastructure, transport and energy”. Telecommunications expenses fall into this category also.

Now my question is simple. If the Government sells its shareholding in Telstra, will this mean that these items (Non-Taxation Revenue and Infrastructure, Transport & Energy Expenses) will simply reduce proportionatily, effectively negating each other. Somehow I doubt it.

So what does the sale of Telstra mean to Australia. I hypothesise that it means a reduction in government revenue and an increase in Infrastructure, Transport & Energy expenses. In other words, a net-reduction in the government surplus. No more tax cuts for Joe Public.

It may seem counter-intuitive to some readers that I suggest that expenses will increase if the government sells its ownership in Telstra. Surely the government won’t need to dip into its pockets to pay for telecommunications when private companies are running the show? Well ask yourself this then -> why is it that Telstra is the only telecommunications provider in the bush? If private companies are unwilling to invest in the bush now, why would Telstra continue to do so when it is 100% privatised? Undoubtedly the government will need to continue to provide funding for telecommunications services in non-profitable areas of Australia.

But surely the expenses wouldn’t INCREASE? Surely they would stay the same? Well I hypothesise that a fully privatised operation, facing increasing competition and decreasing margins will lobby hard to the government for more funding for the non-profitable areas of Australia. The government, faced with very unhappy farmers will have no option but to kow-tow to the telecommunications providers and dig deeper into their pockets.

But I hear others amongst you say that surely the revenue the government will reap from putting the sale proceeds into the so called “Future Fund” will outweigh the revenues they receive from Telstra currently and result in a net-positive increase in the budget surplus? I wonder why we believe the government would be more adept at managing an equity investment vehicle when they have so poorly mismanaged their own superannuation schemes and are predicting a $120 billion hole of unfunded government superannuation funds by the year 2020? I certainly have little faith that the government’s “Future Fund” will be successful.

So whats the solution? Simple. The government needs to retain (or repurchase, as it were) ownership of telecommunications infrastructure assets. Sell off all other aspects of Telstra and allow all telecommunications providers in Australia to compete on a level playing field with all providers gaining access to the government owned, operated and and maintained infrastructure, for the same price.

I’m currently in the middle of the property game, buying and selling property to upgrade to something more to my (and my partners) liking. In doing so I’ve been dutifully reading the terms and conditions of multiple banking contracts and I happened across a little clause which basically states that the Bank has the right to vary the terms of the contract, at any time. Lets put aside for a moment that I really don’t understand why Banks and Telstra have the right to vary the terms of a contract whenever they feel like it.

The part that struck me as strange is the little comment following “We may vary the terms at anytime” with “by notifying you in writing,

or in the national press

“. Who on earth came up with the idea of the national press? Is it to be assumed that everyone buys the newspaper every day, just to see if their bank has decided to increase their net profits at their customers expense? Was there some deal struck between Kerry Packer back when he started his media empire, and the government, to allow the big fella to sell more newspapers? I really don’t get it.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Just a quick blog to get down a few of my thoughts on the recent passing of the VSU bill.

Firstly, I’m surprised it made it through. As late as Wednesday last week, the media was reporting that Dr Brendan Nelson was making concessions, practically conceding that the Bill, in its form at that stage, wouldn’t get through. Then, by the end of the week, one of the Family First Senators has gotten behind it and its all go, even without Barnaby Joyce’s support. Impressive turnaround.

But, as I’ve discussed in a previous blog, I believe its a blow to university culture. I’ve stated often enough that the core issue wasn’t whether Student Union fees should be compulsory or voluntary. I believe the core issue was that Student Union’s weren’t accountable enough for where funds were channelled, and hence, the funds were open to abuse. Its all very well to argue that students should have a choice, but there are facilities and services that are provided under union funding that have a subtle influence on university life – call them “culture”.

Many of the clubs at universities, including sporting clubs, simply will not survive based on the fees they would charge club members to make up the shortfall. To argue that students now have choice and can choose where their money goes certainly sounds appealing. However, I would argue that the union fee that was previously paid was only about $200 per year. In the scheme of the overall university fees, this was a drop in the ocean. Furthermore, its quite likely that the university fees will increase by this amount (or probably more), resulting in students having no more disposable income than prior to VSU. Of course, thats a whole other argument about university funding.

So back to the sporting clubs. Let me give a few figures from a University Basketball Club that I previously was the President of, to illustrate the dilemma:
* Union Funding per annum = $16,000
* Club Member Fees = $6,500
* Court/Gym Hire = ($11,000)
* Team Nominations and Association Fees = ($6,200)
* Team Coach Payments = ($3,000)
* Basketball and Club Equipment = ($500)
* Uniform Purchase = ($600)
GRAND TOTAL = $1,200

I’ve rounded some figures here for simplicity, but its pretty close to the reality. Now consider that the University may well remove the $16,000 funding, and you see the dilemma. With an active player base of around 60 players, thats an extra $267 per year that will be expected to be paid by each member to cover the shortfall. Thats a pretty big ask, because its about 3-4 times the amount currently charged.

Whats more likely is that the club will have to cut back on training and court hire, stop paying coaches, and become a bare-bones club. Thats doing wonders for club spirit and “culture”. Its a damned shame.

Still, its no use crying over spilt milk. So lets just hope that members of university clubs realise the impact of this recent legislation and start lobbying for the Universities to continue funding them, even without the union fees income.

Hell, why don’t the Universities just lobby the government for more taxpayer money to fund it. That way, the Students parents can fund it through their taxes. Gee… what a good idea!

So the silly season is almost upon us. Christmas parties start. Staff get drunk. Bosses narrowly avoid harassment law-suits by ensuring there’s enough alcohol around for everyone to forget specifics of the night. And most of Australia gets ready to shut-down, turn on the airconditioning, and reignite family rivalries.

But within all this joviality, there’s also another type of fun brewing. Its the time of year that games developers unleash their new releases onto the public and hope to hit a goldmine. This year its supported by the release of the Playstation Portable, the XBox360 (well, in America at least), and the impending arrival of the Playstation3.

So I’m going to give a few snippets of my view of the latest games hitting the market as they do, just to add a non-advertorial fueled reality to these games. Mostly I’m focusing on PC games, as they are my babies.

Age of Empires 3
Let me start with Age of Empires 3. This is the next installment by Ensemble Studios/Microsoft in what has been an excellent series so far. Personally, I loved the last installment expansion pack (Age of Empires 2 – The Conquerors) and wasted many hours getting flogged by other players online. The latest one doesn’t disappoint either, and is certainly enjoyable for online play. A new twist with “Home Cities” adds a few improvements that allow you to gain the edge on your opponent, if you know what you’re doing. The single player campaigns will entertain if you’re into that thing. Personally, the single-player aspect of RTS games has never appealed to me, other than perhaps to learn the ropes of how to play so that I don’t get completely caned online.
But – despite being a solid game, I must admit that I was a little disappointed. Primarily because the reviews I read about it made it sound like a giant step forward in the RTS genre. Rubbish – in my humble opinion, Age of Mythology was just as speccy, and thats a couple of years old now! Having said that, its not the games fault – thats just the reviewers fault for setting expectations so high.

Therefore, I’d give this an 8/10 overall – just not for originality.

Civilization 4
Next cab of the rank – Civilization 4. Now I love Atomic magazine and would recommend it to anyone in Australia – its a great read. However, they missed the boat on their review of this one. Not because anything they said was incorrect, but because their scoring just isn’t right. The game holds very true to the original Civilization, and just upgrades graphics, sound and a few other new gameplay perks. I absolutely *loved* the original Civilization game, so I too love Civilization 4. However, I think anyone new to the Civilization gameplay concept would struggle to adopt this one into their gaming mecca. Atomic gave it a 10/10. I’d give it an 7/10. Only because it is great for a nostalgic hit, and is as “pure” as a Civilization game can come – but its not earthshattering in any department.

There’s a heap of other games about to hit the stores, and I’ll be trying to get my hands on them and test run em for a quickie review. Some I’m particularly interested in are Elder Scrolls IV – Oblivion and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

Stay Tuned!

I don’t know how many people reminisce about the “old days”, although I’m sure its a lot. I do it a fair bit, and something that was a big part of my youth was computer games. I spent numerous hours at the local deli where they’d get the latest arcade game in and I’d plug an enormous number of 20c pieces into the machine trying to master the levels. The old faves still bring back fond memories, like Double Dragon, Gauntlet, Ghosts & Goblins to name a few.

In addition to arcade games, I got my first computer when I was 7 years old (1984!). My parents bought an Amstrad CPC 6128 which was technically superior to the popular Commodore 64, but much like the Mac and PC wars of recent years, it suffered from the drawback of less software titles compared to the C64. Still, it was a hell of a lot of fun unpacking the Amstrad (which came complete with a color monitor and built in disk-drive – Commodores still only came standard with a tape drive at the time), powering it up, being presented with a READY > prompt, and having no idea what to do next. I think my Dad and I spent a whole afternoon just working out how to load the game that came packaged with it – I must find out what the game was called sometime.

Years later I purchased an old Amstrad CPC6128 for $100 just to relive the old days. What a waste of money! It may have been good then, but understandably it was a real disappointment by now. Thats something that I love about games – they keep getting better and better. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of meaning that something which was excellent 20 years ago, is complete garbage by todays standards. Although, there are still a few classics around like Boulderdash and many of the arcade classics, by and large they just don’t stand up over time.

Thankfully now I don’t need to waste my money on purchasing old PC gear anymore to get a taste of the past. There are plenty of excellent emulators, for the PC, available nowadays, and most of the ROMS can be found somewhere on the internet. Of course, its not really legal to own the ROMS unless you own the original software. But I wonder how much the software companies would actually want you to pay for a copy of Boulderdash, Maniac Mansion, Who Dares Wins, or any of the other old software titles these days? I’d probably be in for a rude shock!

Some of the better Emulators I’ve seen around are, of course, MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) – excellent to relive the old arcade classics. Even better if you have the time to build an arcade cabinet with authentic arcade joysticks – something I plan to do in the future. An excellent Amstrad Emulator is Caprice . But be warned – the graphics just aren’t as good as you may have remembered them!

There’s also Emulators for the Commodore 64, Amiga, Playstation etc etc etc. But I never actually used them so I have no idea how to drive the command line for them!

But if you too were into gaming, and perhaps still are, I recommend checking out the emulators available today. Its an awesome splash of nostalgia!

This week I finally got back onto a basketball court after over 3 months away. Talk about painful! Its incredible how quickly we lose physical fitness, but how difficult it is to regain it. If only it was the other way around! If anyone’s interested, you can check out the website for my basketball club – the Adelaide University Basketball Club (AUBC) – Griffins.

Lots of talk this week about the introduction of the Voluntary Student Union (VSU) bill into parliament. Obviously its being strongly opposed by the student unions. Now, I recall from my time at university that there was inappropriate use of union funds by certain student union representatives. In my mind, thats the biggest issue, and it has to stop. But to remove the funding altogether by making it voluntary for students to contribute, is going too far. Sure, make student unions more accountable for their expenditures. As a student, it should be possible to demand an income/expenditure statement, fully itemised from the union, to make sure some student politician is gallavanting around the country at students expense. If funding for student associations (which comes primarily from student union fees) is removed, it will have a significant negative effect on student life. Of course, you could argue that the universities should also recognise this, and would hopefully continue to fund these associations, even without student union fees. But, somehow I doubt it.

So this week it was announced that the next Catholic Youth Conference will be held in 2008 in Sydney, Australia. Great news for Australian Catholic Youth’s. John Howard sung the praises of this as a great thing for Australia. I wonder, if a Muslim Youth conference, or even a Jewish Youth conference were planned in Australia, whether the government would be singing such high praises?

Now in a related issue, the terrorism summit was held this week and I’m sure nobody failed to notice the hoo-ha over the exclusion of the Muslim fundamentalist leaders. Whilst I understand the reasons, I don’t agree it was sensible to exclude them. Sure they are a small part of the overall Muslim community, but isn’t that the point? It only takes a very small number to commit terrible acts, so excluding them, and possibly isolating them further, doesn’t make sense.

And of course, there were the calls from the government towards increasing secularisation of society and the shared beliefs that we must all live by, irrespective of our religious (or lack of) views. I totally agree. So John Howard should keep quiet about singing praises about Catholic youth conferences in Australia, and such like. Its not his place as the Prime Minister to do so.

Finally, West Coast Eagles were beaten by the Adelaide Crows at Subiaco to lose the minor premiership in the AFL *sob*. Being a West Australian boy, living in Adelaide, I would have loved to rub it in to the many Crows supporters that we’d won. But now I’ll just have to keep a low profile and cop the flack from them! Something to look forward too.

Well not much time goes by that I’m not reading something. Its not uncommon for me to have 2 or 3 books on the go at one time, and right now is no different.

I just finished up reading “What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response” by Bernard Lewis. Published in 2002 (ISBN 075381675X). Mr Lewis presents various points of discussion around the rise and fall of Islamic society, and postulates some of the reasons for what went wrong. Its an interesting read, and not too heavy going, particularly for those, like me, that have a fairly limited understanding of the Middle East and Islamic society in general. I found the section that discussed secularisation particularly interesting, as it hadn’t occurred to me that this concept was brought into the Middle East by Christian-based society. When you think about, most laws that exist in secular societies are based on Christian beliefs, so its not really that surprising that other religions have some issue with them. When you agree with that, its not a large stretch to see how Muslim fundamentalists could be calling for the abolition of secularisation, and the reinstatement of Islamic law.

I’m also reading “1812 – Napolean’;s Fatal March on Moscow” by Adam Zamoyski (ISBN 0007123744). After travelling to Europe I’m a bit more interested in some of the history, and spotted this book in a bookshop in London. I don’t know an awful lot about Napolean, so I thought I’d have a read to learn a bit more. I’m not too far through yet, but something strikes me as really extraordinary. Napolean and Tsar Alexander did an awful lot of their “communication” through their Diplomats, rather than face to face. When you consider what was at stake, and the number of lives at stake, you’d think they’d try to meet face to face a bit more wouldn’t you? Lets hope our own world leaders don’t make the same mistakes (although I’ve heard that even after WW2 there was a “hot-phone” between the US and Soviet Union, which was to be used for the leaders to talk before firing off nukes – so thats a good sign).

Finally, I haven’t read a fantasy novel in a loooooong time, having become a bit bored with the whole genre. However, I’m currently reading “The Dragonborne Chair” by Tad Williams (ISBN 1857236165). I’m about half-way through (too far to not finish it!), and its OK. Not brilliant, but not bad either. I’m determined to finish it out of a sense of duty. Being book 1 of 4, I’ll see if its good enough to continue on.

After spending a significant number of years working for a large corporate company, I’ve seen plenty of attempts at improving workflows, optimising time-management, six-sigma methodologies, total quality management iniatives and many, many other catch-phrases which supposedly improve the way we work.

Its got me wondering – do processes really deliver improvement, or are they just an impediment? Clearly thats a pretty broad question, and I guess the answer is going to be specific to the industry and situation. I’m sure that factory production lines wouldn’t exist without processes. But here I’m concentrating on the IT industry. Anyone who has worked in IT knows that its an industry thats constantly changing. To stay employable, you need to stay current, and every new development generally delivers “improvements” on the old-school ways. Of course, this in itself is debatable -> witness the evolution of Microsoft Office, which delivers so many more features with every release, but I’m damned if I know anyone that uses them!

Also, its generally accepted that innovation in the IT industry comes from small, flexible operators that think outside the square in developing something new. Of course, just as many small operators go nowhere at all, fading into the ether. However, its normally these nimble pioneers that come up with an idea, in the hope of being bought out by someone bigger. Just how many small businesses has Cisco acquired in its pursuit of new ideas, technology and growth over the last 10 years?

So I wonder whether process-improvement in the IT industry is counter-productive and stifles innovation, creativity, and most importantly, customer-service? Would the time, effort and money spent on process improvement be better spent elsewhere? Is the effectiveness of process-improvement methodologies reduced depending on the dynamic nature of the IT industry?

So what do you think?