This evening I looked over the telecom companies that are my suppliers, or who supply my suppliers, etc. I noticed that all of them, including Level3 (stock symbol LVLT) have a lot of debt (finance.yahoo.com numbers): Company Name | Cash | Debt ATT | 1.63B | 80.13B Level3 | 666M | 6.84B Verizon | 2.07B | 43.11B Cogent | 129M | 330M Obviously there are other, important numbers and ratios, but I won't go into that here. As you know, there are supposedly huge problems with companies, even top-rated ones, in borrowing from the usual channels. If you assume for example, that Verizon has notes of 10-year terms, then (if the notes are spread evenly) they will need to borrow some $4Billion in the next 12 months. If the terms are a lot shorter, then the amount to borrow goes up significantly of course... My question: Are there any recommendations from an operational perspective, should one or more of these or other telecom companies have such problems? My belief at the moment, is that the risk is low, as operations will always continue running even during bankruptcies (as some may have already seen with other companies). I am not interested in financial prognostications, I am solely focused on operational issues that might affect e.g. connectivity. Cordially Patrick Giagnocavo patrick@zill.net