Given the highly publicized financial troubles of large telecom service providers such as WorldCom, Qwest Communications and Lucent Technologies, and the dire industry revenue predictions for 2003, it would be easy for institutional and individual investors to look for safer returns in more fashionable industries such as biotechnology, systems integration or security. According to the Money Tree Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Venture Economics, this process is already well under way, with private equity investments in the telecom sector in 2002 declining 32% to $555 million from Q2 to Q3. However, while other industries certainly offer many sound investment opportunities, it is premature ―and worse, shortsighted―to count out the investment potential of the telecom sector.
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