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The bill to fix GTE's y2k problems will total a third of a billion dollars, GTE estimates. The company employs 1,200 people to fix the problem.
This is just one telecommunications firm. But they must all be compliant, all over the world, to save the system. Where will they all get the programmers they need?
This appeared in the Ft. Worth STAR TELEGRAM (April 25).
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A survey of several large companies doing business in North Texas shows that dealing with the necessary software and hardware problems isn't going to be cheap.
The biggest bill belongs to GTE, which says it is spending $350 million and has 1,200 workers focusing on the issue.
Yes, 1,200 workers -- all running around GTE's offices counting computers and chasing code. Those people could form a large company of their own.
The Year 2000 issue has become a fat paycheck for programmers and a pain in the bottom line for some senior executives, but nobody's sure how big that pain will ultimately become.
International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass., predicts a total cost of $115 billion for American companies. Software Productivity Research of Burlington, Mass., estimates that the bill will exceed $670 billion. . . .
About half of the 21 Texas companies surveyed for this article didn't report a number this year. And the other half give a confusing array of numbers that make it difficult to tell how expensive dealing with the Year 2000 problem will be.
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