EYES WIDE SHUT

A longtime telecom executive recently lamented to me that he used to be good at forecasting, but now he can't do it worth a damn. Neither, he said, can anyone else.

To me, that comment epitomizes everything about the current state of telecom: It's completely unpredictable. It's frustrating as hell. It has made everyone re-evaluate their strategic directions and question their own abilities. And most important, it has made virtually every industry player (with a couple of high-profile exceptions who are now either “retired” or about to be) more pragmatic and more forthright than they've ever been in their professional lives.

That last part is perhaps one of the only positive byproducts of economic malaise: It exposes the phonies and weeds out the weak. For proof of that, refer to that scrapheap of ridiculously underdeveloped and short-sighted business plans for companies we used to refer to as upstarts.

All 20/20 hindsight aside, however, everyone's paramount concern is where in the world this industry is going next. How can we predict and plan for the future direction of telecom? What is the safest, sanest, most unique and most lucrative route to recovery? When will that recovery begin, and what will trigger it? Who will be left standing when the dust settles? Why?

There is one short and simple answer to all of those questions: No one really knows. There are just too many variables — financial, technological, regulatory and otherwise — to accurately predict anything anymore. That's precisely why the telecom industry's newfound pragmatism is absolutely essential now — because although precise forecasting is next to impossible, realism born of negative experience has made everyone better prepared and more responsive. It's the next best thing to being able to see the future.

That pragmatism is essential on all levels, in all sectors and at all points in the process — from the entrepreneurs crafting innovative new ways to attack old problems to the newly hardnosed venture capitalists who refuse to get burned again; from the executive leaders trying not to be blinded by idealism to the engineers and technicians charged with building the systems that create opportunity. It's even essential at the endpoint of the process — the point at which the customers make the decisions to spend the money to buy the services that make this whole industry necessary in the first place.

Stripped of the ability to forecast, no one can prescribe cure-all remedies for the telecom industry's ills. But even though it may never again be possible to see what's going to happen up ahead, the practicality that only unspeakably bad experiences can instill will help everyone be ready for it anyway.