EmailShock, horror. Hold the front page. 'European telecoms company wins major deal.' Why all the hullaballoo over something only marginally less dull than ditchwater? Well, the year is 2003, and what sociologists call the Americanisation of the globe has spread to the European telecommunications sector.
In this scenario there are few European players, never mind UK ones, left. A relentless tide of US know-how and money has washed into a Europe still struggling to wake up to the opportunities of deregulation. Some incumbents, only recently privatised, have been swept away in a round of defensive mergers; many European start-ups have been swallowed whole by US predators; the rest operate in niche markets, or are voiceless in unhappy alliances with their transatlantic counterparts. Some European players have collapsed completely, their skeletons picked over by the remaining firms.
In this scenario, the fact that a European operator has been able to defeat American competition becomes a headline-grabbing event.
It is only a scenario, but it is a likely one. The Americanisation of this European market has been happening for years. Last week, when Global Crossing acquired Racal's telecoms business for £1 billion, what had previously been done by stealth was thrown into sharp focus. The US telecoms firms are over-financed and over here. If they are not building their own networks, they are buying those built by others. Or they are buying into other companies. 'US funds made a lot of money backing US startups and they've now decided that Europe is the place to be,' said one analyst.
This is not that surprising. Europe is a cash cow. Energis, the UK company outbid by Global Crossing for Racal, estimates that Europe is 31 per cent of the £438bn global telecoms market, compared with 27 per cent for the US and 12 per cent for Japan.
This figure is expected to increase as demand surges. Companies are becoming increasingly pan-European, and their empires are stretching. They want to ship vast amounts of data as quickly and as securely as possible. The Internet and other new media will also continue to boost - and create - demand.
The first US invader was MCI WorldCom, the hugely acquisitive US telecoms giant, which this month broke all records when it merged with Sprint in a deal valued at $129bn. MCI Worldcom started a pan-European network in 1996. Today, while most other players are only starting to build their networks, MCI has 10 city networks in place in Europe and is two-thirds of the way to building the backbone to link them. Currently the company links 4,000 buildings in the UK to 35,000 in the US. By building from scratch, it has wrong-footed the incumbent firms.
'They're very slow,' said Liam Strong, chief executive of MCI WorldCom International. 'If you're a PTT [a traditional post, telegraph and telephone company], you're not designed to be a modern telecoms company. Look at what we have built in the past 18 months; no PTT has moved as quickly.'
Other companies soon hurried to get a slice of European action. Take GTS. It started life in the Eighties as a not-for-profit organisation financed by George Soros to link Russian and Californian universities. A series of acquisitions in the Nineties, however (including the UK's Esprit Telecom for $1.1bn last year) led to a GTS network through 12 countries.
Level 3, formed by a group of ex-MCI executives, has embarked on a giant network roll-out that joins 16,000 miles of US network to a 3,400-mile European system at a cost of up to $10bn.Then there is Viatel, a Nasdaq- listed company, like GTS and Level 3, that is building a pan-European network linking Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The firm has raised more than a billion dollars through junk bonds to pay for it.
The US Baby Bells, once the local telephone compa nies, are also piling in. SBC Communications (which owns, among other things, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell) this month completed its acquisition of another US operator, Ameritech, which will make it the largest non-European telecoms investor in Europe.
'The likes of SBC are awash with cash that is now pouring into Europe,' said Selim Choonara of telecoms analyst CIT Research.
Other players include iaxis, the Dutch-based, US-financed company that is building an undersea network in the Mediterranean to link Europe, Africa and Asia.
Then there are the conventional European cable opera tors such as Telewest, in which Microsoft has been building strategic stakes. Bill Gates' company also has a stake in NTL, the UK firm that recently bought Cable & Wireless's residential arm but is listed on Nasdaq and backed by US money.
James Dodd, head of telecoms at independent investment bank Bryan Garnier, says those leading the US invasion have two key weapons: cash and knowledge. 'They've had management experience in running independent operations, plus they've had a ready availability of money, which means they're able to build their own networks.'
Finally, US investment firms are increasing their stakes in the European telecoms industry. After all, they have had some notable success. Whisper it quietly: the UK's favourite telecoms stock, Colt, is majority-owned by US backers.
Given the rush to wire Europe, some analysts predict problems with a bandwidth bonanza: too many cables, not enough demand.
But for now the US companies are confident. 'If you give people more efficient ways to communicate, they will communicate more,' Strong said.
Increasingly these 'efficient ways' will have an American provenance. Uncle Sam is making the calls.
