In this episode of The Bear Roars, Dan sits down with Frank Louthan, Managing Director at Raymond James and longtime telecom analyst, to unpack the wild rise and fall of the telecom and fiber industry during the dot-com boom and bust. Frank covered many of the era’s biggest players—WorldCom, Level 3, Global Crossing—and brings a rare, unfiltered perspective on what really happened behind the scenes.
Frank’s journey began as a young analyst navigating an industry in hypergrowth, only to watch it unravel through regulatory arbitrage, inflated IRU swaps, and unsustainable business models. He shares stories from the front lines—legendary earnings calls, telecom execs caught in denial, and how Wall Street slowly woke up to the scale of fraud inside companies like WorldCom and Quest.
Dan and Frank dig into the crash and what came after—how companies like AboveNet and CenturyTel rebuilt with discipline and long-term vision, and how those lessons still apply today as bandwidth demand surges with the rise of AI, edge computing, and hyperscale data infrastructure.
Order Dan’s Book – Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book
To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com
