Broadbandits (PDF)

Investigating the financial fraud and misguided power plays that
brought down the telecom industry

Once the foundation of the Dow and NASDAQ, the telecom industry
has eaten up more capital than any other industry in recent history
and has nothing to show for it. Today, it is by far the worst
culprit in the spate of financial dirty dealings that have been
splashed across the business pages, and yet the rewards reaped by
top executives at many of these failed or failing companies have
been inversely proportionate to their decline. Broadbandits takes
readers behind the scenes to get the story they won't get in the
media. Investigative reporter Om Malik follows the money trail and
deciphers the actions and motivations of a generation of new
economy "barbarians" that brought down this once lucrative
industry. This intriguing book offers an inside look into the
telecom bubble, with tales and anecdotes about mavericks who turned
simple light and glass fibers into veins of gold, financiers who
got greedy and fleeced unsuspecting millions, clueless venture
capitalists who thought they'd tapped into the mother lode, hapless
entrepreneurs who believed that they were changing the world, and
self-proclaimed pundits who were cheering it all on from the
sidelines. Broadbandits is a compelling account of the downfall of
telecom giants such as WorldCom and Global Crossing, and will show
readers how many telecom upstarts and veterans alike became victims
of what one chief executive aptly described as "high-yield
heroin."

Om Malik (New York, NY) is a Senior Writer for Red Herring who
focuses on the telecommunications sector. Prior to joining Red
Herring in July 2000, he was senior editor at Forbes.com. His work
has also been published in newspapers and magazines such as The
Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, Brandweek, and Crain's New York
Business. For a very brief while, he was a venture capitalist.