CLECs Must Race Tide

Even though consumers now account for only about 22 percent of total incumbent telco revenue, and even though dominant telcos are losing share in that market, competitors in the business segment essentially are racing an incoming tide.

That tide is lost incumbent market share. At some point, regulators will decide the market leaders have lost enough share, and give incumbents more freedom to price and package their services, which inevitably will lead to higher wholesale rates for competitors that now rely on incumbent facilities--and wholesale discounts based on their market power--to build their businesses.

So the essential strategic task is to take share now, while it can be more easily gotten, knowing that competitive conditions will sharpen once the incumbents are more free to package and price. And that tide is coming in.

U.S. telcos continue to lose residential phone subscribers to both cable VoIP and wireless subscriptions at a steady seven to eight percent a year, according to Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins. Wireless is a lesser issue, as incumbents own a majority of that business, and simply must cope with product substitution. Wireless penetration should rise from an estimated 83 percent this year to 87 percent by the end of 2008.

Indeed, by 2010, wireless-only households should rise to 27 percent, from 13 percent last year and an estimated 17 percent this year, Rollins argues.

Cable VoIP penetration should jump from 10 percent last year and an estimated 14 percent this year to 25 percent by 2010. If the Federal Communications Commission sticks with precedent, that is going to be enough lost share to trigger an end to wholesale access policies favorable to CLECs.

If Rollins is right, those deregulation rules will start to trigger in just a couple of years. Of course, one can argue that market share losses in residential are not the same thing as losses in the business markets. But that hasn't stopped the FCC from deregulating in the past.

Ironically, incumbent market share loss is the very thing that will unleash them as more formidable competitors.