With AT&T shares hitting a 30-year low and Verizon shares hitting a 15-year low last week in the aftermath of the Wall Street Journal’s revelations on lead cables, telecommunications experts and industry analysts have been unraveling what the overhang from lead cables may mean for the telecom industry. But it is impossible to understand the telecoms’ nightmarish week without contextualizing the high-level tectonic shifts that have played out in the telecoms industry over the last decade, as well as the strategic challenges and leadership opportunities moving forward.
How we got to this point is largely a tale of three companies–since over the last decade, the market capitalization of AT&T and Verizon stock have both diminished by tens of billions while T-Mobile shares have grown by 10 times, with the latest plunges in AT&T and Verizon exacerbating the massive transfer of shareholder value, market share, and customers to T-Mobile. The divergent paths of these three largest telecoms giants are a reminder of the power of investing in infrastructure and quality of customer experience.
