Competition Watch

Until recently, telephone companies could get by without a strategic tool on which companies in the retail industry rely-the serving area map with push pins to indicate locations of key competitors and their spheres of influence. Indeed, such a map would have been preposterous in the telecom industry of the monopoly era.

But in today's marketplace, customers increasingly have multiple carriers from which to choose, and for many metropolitan areas, the telecom map may have just as many players as some retail industries. In this environment, competitive intelligence is a vital asset.

With this issue, Telephony launches Competition Watch, designed to bring you that kind of competitive intelligence. This week, you'll find it on page 12.

Competition Watch will bring you breaking news about new carriers and new service launches. You'll read where and when carriers are launching service, installing switches, laying fiber and filing for regulatory approval. Some of the players will be new companies you may not have heard of before. Others may be familiar names that are expanding beyond their traditional serving areas or service offerings.

We expect Competition Watch to run at least a couple of times each month. Look for it on the fourth page of A.M. Report.

The news items in Competition Watch will be timely and to the point. They will supplement the longer and more in-depth news and feature stories that focus on the personalities, strategies and technologies that drive the competitive telecommunications industry.

We hope the information contained in Competition Watch will be valuable to both established and recently launched companies. We are pleased to number communications carriers of all kinds among our readers, and we strive to provide coverage that will be useful to them all.

Just as push pins on a map can help players in an industry identify key challenges and opportunities, we hope the information contained in Competition Watch will help reveal the ever-changing contours of the telecom landscape.

We encourage carriers to submit news about network and service expansion, new financing arrangements and new approvals to us for possible inclusion in Competition Watch. We also invite your feedback on this and other editorial coverage. Please write to us at telephony@intertec.com.