We are witnessing a massive reorganization of the telco industry along global lines. Telcos are being broken up into infrastructure (infraco), network (netco), and customer‑facing services (servco) units, with most of the juiciest bits spun off to REITs and hedge funds posing as infracos. The global internet and hyperscale cloud fabrics are certainly drivers behind the horizontal globalization of connectivity, but the real story is where the cash flows end up.

Cash flows run through customer‑facing servcos, into netco services, and down into long‑term leases for infraco physical plant. In other words, every time you pay your mobile bill, you are helping to fund whatever it is BlackRock and other private money interests want to do. This is how a company like Verizon ends up with an income statement chart that looks like this:

Cease to resist, giving my goodbye
Drive my car into the ocean
You’ll think I’m dead, but I sail away
On a wave of mutilation

This is the final Commsrisk article. The website will continue to host the Commsrisk Global Fraud Dashboard under the stewardship of James Greenley, the software engineer who created it, for as long as he can find financial backers to support that work. Presenting reams of objective data compiled from varied international sources is the best way to build on the platform constructed during the first two decades of this website. Facts and figures need to rule; words are too messy and too easily twisted. My regular narratives about the communications sector end now, not with regret, but with pleasure. I am glad to be released to live a different life to the one that has consumed so much of me.