Lies, damn lies, and statistics

In these days of pitch-by-soundbite, we are all quite susceptible to the
outrageous--but difficult to prove--'fact'

A small fraction of a very big number is usually a pretty big number itself. This less than revolutionary mathematical truth gets continually reinforced--for me at least--whenever I go to conferences or meet people from the industry who give me the first two numbers and then supply the third one. Global telecom turnover being what it is, all these dollar numbers almost always look huge. And when they illustrate something bad, I can look suitably shocked with a how-can-they-let-this-happen expression on my face. Of course, these numerical truths are usually designed to make a point, generally of the buy-my-stuff and solve-this-problem variety.

A few weeks ago, I came across another one: mobile operators routinely lose six per cent of their revenues by simple processing and billing mistakes. The percentage (I was assured) is correct. But who is to know whether it is or not? It certainly sounds big, and is just the sort of statistic that should plunge a pitchfork into complacent telco boardrooms everywhere. The six per cent (it turns out) often comes from simple mistakes that keyboard operators or billing operations make when processing accounts, such as mis-keying and entering the decimal point in the wrong place on the account form.

If it's true, these sort of statistics once again show that the industry is relatively cavalier when it comes to chasing down the pennies. Perhaps most industries are. But telecom seems to tolerate wastage so much more, and as an inherently complex industry, perhaps there are simply more mistakes to be made. Maybe too, after all, no one really has a big enough picture of the industry to know just where all the money is in fact going even in general terms. Sure, we have revenue assurance functionality creeping into the community (I believe the more hip term is revenue enhancement) but these don't get nearly enough attention at senior levels.

I've another point about these 'statistics'. Do they in fact reflect an accurate picture of the industry, anyway? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. In these days of pitch-by-soundbite, we are all quite susceptible to the outrageous--but difficult to prove--'fact'. I once read a book (on how to be a professional con artist) that ran a list of very impressive endorsements from various experts at the beginning. After pointing out that it was remarkably easy to fool pretty much anybody, said the author, he went on to say that he had probably already fooled the person reading the book. Take the testimonials, for example. "I wholeheartedly agree with each of them for many reasons," he said, "but mostly because I wrote them myself."

This sort of cheek is quite inspirational. I should try putting a few of these around myself along the lines of "50 per cent of the employees in the telecom industry internationally are looking for another job", or "one dissatisfied employee leaves the industry every ten seconds, and aggregate annual losses to the industry are US$5 bn".

I have no idea if any of the statements I have just made are true, or indeed bear any relationship to being true. Or how about losses due to fraud in the telecom industry are probably four or five times those in the international music business due to piracy even though the music industry makes a lot of, er, noise, about them? Now, this one is probably true insofar that it relates two publicly announced amounts, but I am not sure if anyone really has an idea how the individual amounts themselves are worked out.

But I'm just getting started in this game. If I can think of really big numbers for everything in the industry, someone is bound to take notice. But what I really need for career enhancement is a 'Law' after my name. I'll pass the problem on to you. Any ideas?

Stephen McClelland, editorial director, Telecommunications[R] International

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