A Dickens of a Relationship Problem

From every angle you approach the situation, network operators need to rip down their walled gardens and open up their network assets for use by third-party service providers and developers. Operators are historically ill-equipped to provide all the services and personalization that 21st century subscribers consider a birthright and they cannot survive by simply providing a pipe between expensive end devices and Web servers owned by third parties. Though some operators may make a go of a transport-only business model, the sad reality is that carriers will need to forge extensive partnerships or perish. Survival itself, then, demands that operators insert themselves into the revenue streams of foreign entities by essentially leasing out the unique assets of their networks, such as customer information, billing and charging systems and quality of service and policy controls.