he telecom bubble, as figure 9-4 shows. 45 The two worst performers among the large foreign ILECs in terms of the value of their equities were British Telecom and NTT, the Japanese incumbent. British Telecom was very aggressive in trying to capitalize on the telecom boom of 1998-2000, but it did SO in a different way than most of its EU compatriots. It invested heavily in alliances and joint ven- tures around the world, committing £5.8 billion (about US$8 billion) to such ventures in 1998-2000. In addition, its capital expenditures were £10 billion in these three years. These were very large sums for a carrier whose revenues were only £16 billion in 1998. NTT, on the other hand, pursued an aggressive strategy of acquiring interests in foreign wireless companies and a U.S. Internet company, Verio. In fiscal 2001 the company spent ¥1.9 trillion (about US$17 billion) on such acquisitions. In 2002, realizing that it had overpaid for many of these assets, it began to take large write-downs for them. The value of all telecom stocks peaked in early 2000, but the values of FT and DT rose the most markedly among the large incumbent carriers in the world, increasing by about 400 percent in just over two years. The market did not take kindly to BT's and NTT's aggressive investments, however, and BT stock rose a modest 100 percent during this period, while NTT's stock posted similarly modest growth. By contrast, Telefonica and Telecom Italia were not very aggressive in acquiring wireless or other assets after liberalization. As a result, their equi- ties rose less during the 1998-2000 frenzy. When the bubble burst, Tele- fonica's equity price fell, but it was still substantially above its December 1997 value in mid-2004. Telecom Italia's equity price showed similar sta- bility. On the other hand, the equity values of BT, NTT, FT, and DT fell more sharply after February 2000, when it became obvious that their var- ious investments in joint ventures, wireless assets, and new 3G spectrum had been purchased at prices that were f