Pulling off the highway and into the sprawl of Calais, France, drivers notice a roadside billboard showing two tin cans and a piece of string. Europe's mobile phone operators are desperate for new business to maintain their gravity-defying growth rates. One French ad offers two phones, a Motorola and an Alcatel, for 13 cents. And while liberalization in Europe's telecom markets enabled many of them to scoop up new customers across the continent during 2000, it also means they can't rely on keeping customers for life as old-style national telecom companies could.
European manufacturers lead the way in telecom equipment.
But the dark side of Europe's telecom bonanza is debt.