Smart Pipes

In the emerging digital economy Communication Service Providers (CSPs) no longer enjoy total ownership of their customer. They do not control the whole value chain either. The customer now has the flexibility to go over the top to buy services, applications and content, bypassing the CSP. This freedom creates even stronger probability for the service providers to serve as a ‘dumb pipe’ just providing networking and access capabilities for higher value services monetized by other players. Of course, the strategy of leading service providers is to rather become ‘smart pipes’ filled with attractive content, applications and communication services supplied by themselves and a variety of value chain partners. To achieve this goal they need to redefine and transform themselves by adopting new business models and opening up their service delivery infrastructure to innovative application developers and 3rd party service providers.