In article , Matt Barrow wrote:
companies ploughed vast amounts of money into 3G licenses which were ALL
to do with the dot.com bubble)

They did so under the orders of the FCC. (See first article below).

Not here they didn't - they did it to themselves - the mad scramble for
3G licenses sold by auction pushed the value way above what they were
worth as the telecoms companies scrambled blindly to get on the 3G
bandwagon. To date, there is only one major 3G network (called 3) which
is notable for being awful (it doesn't give you real internet access,
merely a walled garden of their own approved content). Not surprisingly,
3 has moved to selling their service on cheap voice calls. Hardly the
promise of 3G. I think another mobile provider has recently started
rolling out 3G, years after they scrambled to get on the bandwagon that
was as insubstantial as the hard vacuum of space.

There is one telecom company that has continuously turned a profit. Manx
Telecom. But they are a monopoly, and if times are tough they just
ratchet up their charges a bit because they don't need to care about
competition (and to make it seem as if they are offering 'value' and are
not a monopoly, price their less popular services dirt cheap so they can
crow in their advertising how calls to Outer Timbuktoo are half the
price with them compared to a UK carrier). Whilst the rest of the telecom
industry has been in the doldrums, they have been making profit rates
well over 30%.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
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"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"