No Pipe, Dumb Pipe, Fat Pipe, Smart Pipe

By Al Brisard

Not unlike a Dr. Seuss story, the debate over what carriers should or should not be doing regarding pipes and the value-add that rides over them continues to rage, as evidenced from the speakers at the TM Forum sessions in Orlando, Fla. this month. It can be as frustrating as a political discussion by participants of different parties.

So let’s look at this in a couple ways. First, does anyone remember ISDN? This was probably the first real pipe, even though it was a switched service. When ISDN came out, carriers were begging for applications that would pull through ISDN services by creating demand. Intel Blue desktop videoconferencing comes to mind. Any non-carrier entity that had a capability that would contribute toward this goal caught everyone’s attention. Then along came the Internet, which caused greater demand for dial up services as well as ISDN services. Product managers of every “pipe"-type service offering were leveraging the Internet application to pull through more of their product ... and they were thrilled.  

Fast forward to today, where we have approximately 85 percent broadband penetration, but all the envy is about what is riding over the pipes. Just selling boring old pipes is no longer good enough. This may be true, but carriers can still add a lot of value to the pipes. Such things as expanded quality of service (basic and on-demand), metering, pricing based on time of day usage, dedicated application bandwidth by type of service and customer controlled network variables immediately come to mind.

In parallel, carriers can still create and deliver innovative services and capabilities that ride over these pipes … along with everyone else ... on the same playing field. Perhaps these services and capabilities could be part of a separate business unit within a carrier, similar to what is being done with cloud services. They will still have a competitive advantage via bundles and packaging.

The idea, as suggested by some at the TM Forum, that carriers should not be in the pipe business at all, but rather in the platform business, seems like a typical political-esque spin of “I want my cake and eat it too."  I guess that if it were to go this way, then, I shouldn’t have to order a pipe, but just choose from an a la carte menu of capabilities without any concern on my part for how it gets to my devices. This is easier to visualize in the wireless world, but in the wired space there are still some challenges to be overcome. We still need really good pipe providers!!!!

Al Brisard is vice president of marketing and business development at Vertek Corp., a leading provider of end-to-end business process outsourcing, business consulting and managed business assurance offerings that allow communication providers to reduce costs, improve customer experiences, grow revenue and ultimately improve profitability. Contact him at: abrisard@vertek.com.