The View From TMW: Carriers to Be Big Dumb Pipes?

There was a black-tie affair at the TM Forum’s Management World conference Monday night. My presence wasn’t required...so I hung with my fellow riff-raff and had what I’ll bet was a better time.

And today, I’m feeling my inner Brit. Never before have I been surrounded by such variety in the English language. I couldn’t tell you which was which, but there had to be a bit of East Midlands in there and some East Anglian, some Scottish with a twinge of New Zealand, a fair amount of Lancashire and even a little Cockney and some Southside Chicago mixed in.

So in thinking about the unintended theme of this biggest of all BSS and OSS shows—because there is always an unintended theme—I was drawn to one of my favorite Western European islanders, Declin McManus, also known as Elvis Costello. One of his songs has been playing in my head from the moment I had my first discussion at Management World this week. The lyrics are as follows:

One day you're going to have to face

a deep dark truthful mirror

and it's going to tell you things that I still

love you too much to say.

Well it’s mirror time in telecom. And while I don’t have the heart to tell the industry things that I still love it too much to say, and there isn’t exactly a sense of urgency about making a decision—that may be a year or two away—it is time that Tier 1 service providers begin to more seriously entertain the big questions: Is being a big fat pipe such a bad thing? Do I really have a place in this new value chain? Am I kidding myself that my subscriber database will allow me to continue owning the customer? Do I really need to be the brand or is that just my ego talking?

And if the mirror speaks and the deep dark truth is that it is time to give up on this dream of being the source of all that is next generation, then the next question should be: How do we spin this to look as if the decision to be the best network transport and access provider we can be, and be happy about it, looks as if it was truly the positive strategic choice it may very well be rather that the triumph of the Internet that people will make it out to be?

There have been veiled warnings over the past few years that telecom better get its act together or it will end up being nothing more than a big fat dumb pipe. But the warning has always sounded hollow, much like the warning to “stop doing that or you’ll go blind.”

Nobody in telecom ever sounded like they meant it; they sounded like they knew the industry would eventually open its war chest, apply its latent ingenuity and win the day in the end. But this week, the tone has changed. Service providers may not be asking the questions, but everyone else is. And something else has changed. People are not automatically assuming that there is only one right answer.

E-mail me at heyBOSS@vpico.com