The other concern at ITEXPO was all of the layoffs in telecom. The number of telecom jobs has dramatically shrunk in the last 4 years - and is still shrinking.

As the industry looks at even more consolidation from these big 3 moves - Comcast-TWC, DirecTV-ATT and L3-twt. How many synergies will be let go with this M&A? Probably more than 20,000 layoffs.

Where have all the telecom jobs gone?

I thought cloud companies would be picking up some of these folks (just not at the same pay package), but the Snowden revelations has been hitting the US Cloud Providers hard. Look at Cisco's numbers:

"Emerging markets were definitely under siege, at least in part to the changing post-Snowden environment. As the largest US vendor with the most public face, Cisco has been taking the brunt of the buy-non-American movement overseas. China revenues were down 23%, but Brazil wasn't far behind down 13% with other emerging markets also lagging. Cisco doesn't expect those numbers to rebound anytime soon either." [telecom ramblings]

Where will all these people go?