Back in February I mentioned in passing that Level 3 had more layoffs. Now it looks like the ship is springing some leaks if you picked up the latest edition of GigaOm yesterday.
The entire leadership in their voice group is gone and what remains is a shell of itself. It started over a year ago with the shipping out to Verisign by Charles Meyers, and now has impacted Meryl McNeil, Michael Remacle, Cynthia Carpenter and others.
Om points out the the former fair haired boy Kevin O’Hara now took leave with the excuse being problems fulfilling orders. Their may be some truth to that but its process paralysis by too much analysis. The biggest problem Level 3 has is getting orders through the system. The amount of time I’ve heard it takes to become a Level3 customer and to get things into their system is also sales operations problem.
Candidly I would not be surprised if there’s more going on here, like Global Crossing or XO being bought next by the boys from Broomfield and then seeing their eye’s looking to Kansas City with their sites set on Sprint.
Andy, I enjoy the thought provocation of your suggestion that Level 3 may be out to make another acquisition or two, but I think this is unlikely, unless you are talking about 2009 or later. Level doesn’t have the money or integration capacity to do acquisitions right now. More here: http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2008/03/level-3-do-the.html