TELECOM

Everyone said Africa was too poor for mobile phones. 100 million subscribers later, I think the market disagreed.

Skype carried 40% of international phone calls at its peak. We turned a $0 product into a $8.5 billion company. Free can be very expensive for incumbents.

I bought Telmex for $1.7 billion. People thought I was crazy. Now it is worth more than the GDP of most Central American countries.

We saw what mobile phones could do in Europe and the United States. We asked: why can't the same thing happen in Africa? Nobody had a good answer.

Fashion and telecom look very different, but they both run on network effects and brand loyalty.

Fixed-mobile convergence is the name of the game in European telecoms. The companies that can offer both services will win.

Consolidation is inevitable. The question is whether you're the consolidator or the consolidated.