It's how you tell 'em

Oh dear. I arrived at work this morning at 6:45 to find that Deutsche Telekom sent out a release at 11:49 PM last night, basically as a pre-release of results and profits warning. Foul! Then again, how does one deliver such a raft of bad news? I could go into detail here, but given that I've been doing that most of the day already anyway, you'll understand if I refrain for now. Suffice it to say that, as with France Telecom before it, this seems to underline just how fast the markets are transforming (along the way, CFO Dr. Eick gave a few datapoints - German DSL pricing at the bottom of the range is now where the company previously forecast it would be at the end of 2007, legacy data revenues are down twice as far as was expected) and how slowly large, complex companies can respond sometimes. In Q1 we're comfortable with our guidance, but come Q2, we need to take a EUR1bn haircut. Woops!