Women Putting Their Imprint on Telecommunications

Despite nonsense about both appointments being 'woke', Paula Cogan retired from EUNetworks after a very successful fund raising effort that raised enough cash to enable massive network building. Kathy Johnson joined Lumen in late 2022 when the company was floundering due to a high debt to revenue ratio and made the hard choices that her male predecessors could not. The stock price agrees.

Johnson raised cash by selling off Lumen's South American and European assets including the South American and Atlantic cables. It is generally agreed that the buyers overpaid. I suspect these changes are just the beginning. Her talks focus on corporate culture and my impression of the wholesale service provider telecom industry is that its culture stinks. Unable to provide accurate quotes on the spot, limited product innovation, meetings from 8 AM to 10 PM, provisioning so lethargic it looks like slow motion video, and 1990 era automation. The real barrier to profitability is the people side of the business.

Graph showing rise in Lumen's stock price.


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