Blog by Paul Golding

The phrase "Smart Pipe" is an oxymoron, which is a word I love because it says "moron" on the tin - and it's generally morons who promote such nonsensical ideas.

I mean, give me a break. A pipe is a pipe is a pipe. In the real world, what would a smart pipe look like? What would it do? Is it like a hose pipe with a high IQ?

When people use this term, it's just a lame attempt to validate something that doesn't actually exist. If it did exist, then prove it! Show me, Mr Smarty Pipe what you can do....

I'm waiting (last x years)....

Didn't think so.

I've had a GSM phone since they were launched. Heck, I helped design and launch parts of GSM and have the patents to prove it. I was a customer of Vodafone for eons. I would have probably remained so, had it not been for the iPhone. Oh - because Vodafone are so bloody great? Nope. Because who cares?....

They didn't. When I left, not a peep - after 10 years as a loyal customer - going up to 15 contracts with them back in the day of running my own mobile software company before it got screwed between one big company and another over a patent dispute.

Let me boil it down a bit.

I have been running the O2 Incubator program. It was my idea. It's not about smart pipes. It's about smart people. One clutch of bright developers met with me in O2 Media's swanky new Soho offices (nice enough that I might just switch to advertising and use the word "edgy" as my uber-adjective - and thanks to my brother Vince for making up the word "disedginess," which he warned me to avoid.) 

One of the developers told me how many hours I slept and when they were likely to be. In other words, he knew my sleep patterns. Pretty cool, although he was slightly off. But when we discussed why, we figured there was probably a way to improve the algorithm. (I would have been even more impressed if it had figured out that I suffer from insomnia, but I think that's do-able too.)

"And how long did it take to write the code to figure out sleep patterns from the net?" I asked.

"I think I started at 5...," turning to his mate, "Was it five?"
Mate: "Yeah, I think it was about 5..."
"And I had finished by about 10..."

Initially, I thought he must have meant "the 5th" and finished on "the 10th," as in "of March," or something. Five days. Not shabby. Then again, maybe he meant his 10th Red Bull. He didn't. He meant it took him five hours. Within five hours he had written some software to go figure out people's sleep patterns based on what they do on the web.

Smart people can do smart things in incredibly small amounts of time.

And that's what matters. Smart pipes, if they do indeed exist (which they don't) are not going to emerge from dumb pipes. Generally speaking, operators fail to escape the laws of entropy. So, dumb isn't about to morph into smart any time soon. The opportunities are there: The brands, the customers, the assets, the golden "billing relationship," and all that other stuff.... except, that is, the people.

It's not that the people aren't smart. They're just the wrong sort of smart.
And I'm probably no smarter...

But those guys with the code and the sleep patterns... they are smart. And there are others like them, like the smart guys I'm working with to create the #Blue service for O2. I didn't even give them a spec. Heck, they knew what to build without me even telling them (did they use that algorithm to figure out my app habits?)

And that's the issue with all this "Web 2.0" stuff and BIG DATA, and every other such meme, pattern and trend on the internet. It's a language, a way of thinking - and even a way of being. There are certain cultural norms in the internet world that just don't exist elsewhere, least of all in a business predicated on building a pipe. Not to underestimate the skill and resources required to build infrastructure, but it's the cathedral, not the self-organizing bazaar.

Marc Andreesen said it well, as featured in my visual tale of BIG DATA and operators, when he said:



The smart bit of the smart pipe, which doesn't exist, is rapidly building up on in the internet, which is what I was trying to say in my pitch at MWC -- skip straight to the last slide for this point. The new "infrastructure" of connected services is self-assembling on the internet. To operate in this world, operators need to become internet companies. OK, the "become" bit is the problem. They can't.

People who build pipes don't get this stuff. It's not their fault. They're good at what they do. Web platform people are good at what they do too - and this is the new infrastructure. It's a software one. It's being built as operators watch.

Get some smart internet people. Figure out how to standardize some of this "connected services - or contextual - infrastructure" stuff and take the power back. It's never too late to innovate.