Word: bt
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...want to understand why the European telecom industry is throwing more than $230 billion into upgrading to 3G - shorthand for third generation - look no further than Bon's occasionally dodgy telephone. (Not that the handsets linked up to BT Cellnet or Vodafone are any better.) Though mobiles have come a long way since the days when Gordon Gekko stood on the beach talking to a brick, you still wouldn't make a call on one if a landline was available. And if voice services are skimming the edge of adequacy, that's still more than anyone could...
...When Deutsche Telekom, BT and France Telecom were bidding their borrowed billions on licenses last year, it looked like the loans would be a lot easier to pay off than they are today. "We have a plan that will bring our debt down into the range of $27 billion to $36 billion by 2003," says Bon. A nice plan indeed, but mind the yawning $9 billion gap. (A company worth $9 billion on the London Stock Exchange might qualify for the blue-chip FTSE 100 index.) The reason the numbers are so vague is that the debt reduction plan depends...
...relatively lucky one. It's initial public offering of Orange earlier this year was a bomb, raising far less cash than the firm had initially hoped. Then again, says Standard and Poor's credit analyst Guy Deslondes, "At least the money is already in the house." Both BT and Deutsche Telekom have talked about similar public offerings of their wireless divisions to raise cash, but just who's going to buy all these new tech stocks...
...Even more worrisome are ecological concerns. In 1999 Cornell University entomologist John Losey performed a provocative, "seat-of-the-pants" laboratory experiment. He dusted Bt corn pollen on plants populated by monarch-butterfly caterpillars. Many of the caterpillars died. Losey himself is not yet convinced that Bt corn poses a grave danger to North America's monarch-butterfly population, but he does think the issue deserves attention. Others agree. "The problem with transgenics is the risks and hazards involved," says Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriskh, an Indian environmental group working to preserve the country's biodiversity. "We still don't know...
...That is beginning to happen, although?contrary to expectations?the reports coming in are not that scary. For three years now, University of Arizona entomologist Bruce Tabashnik has been monitoring fields of Bt cotton that farmers have planted in his state. And in this instance at least, he says, "the environmental risks seem minimal, and the benefits seem great." First of all, cotton is self-pollinated rather than wind-pollinated, so that the spread of the Bt gene is of less concern. And because the Bt gene is so effective, he notes, Arizona farmers have reduced their use of chemical...