content vs. infrastucture — finally someone gets it right

the people over at techdirt are right on in their piece: Why Aren’t The Telcos Paying Google For Making Their Network Valuable?

” … More importantly, the telcos need to realize that people aren’t just paying to connect to the middle of the network, but to connect the ends to each other. In other words, the internet connection is valuable because Google, Vonage and the others make it valuable for them.”

of all the recent conversations about the telcos wanting money from content providers, or creating different classes of connectivity, this question is actually a valid one. telcos and mobile carriers have to learn and understand that nobody cares about infrastructure. an infrastructure in itself is boring. it is the services that attract users to the infrastructure, but not because of the infrastructure but because of the service. the only reason i pay money to comcast for cable is so that i can watch the daily show and access sites like google, technorati, boingboing … and send and receive email.

i know that the telecoms are being told that this is how it works, but somehow they seem to not want to understand this reality.

what they can do is create infrastructure that will enable new kinds of services, or make existing services better … which will then enable the telcos to charge more for access to the new and improved infrastructure. but they will also be dependent on content companies to offer services that will require the new infrastructure. in a way this is very much like the PC industry … with Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Nvida, EA … all creating an environment which pushes users to get new PCs to because of a new game, or OS which then will also require a new graphic card …. and in the end everybody is making more money … even the Dell’s who are more or less just an infrastructure kind of player in the PC world.