If the most stupid thing ever said about the Internet was Ted Stevens’ infamous “the Internet is a series of Tubes” speech, Andy Kessler’s pieces about the Internet as a series of pipes must rank amongst the most intelligent.
If you can create a ‘virtual pipe’ between the service and the customer, where the the customer cannot exit, and you can hold on to it, and broaden your base – you win.
But there are all sorts of pipes, and nothing special about the material the pipe is made of, what matters is where is links to and from, in the multi dimensional phase space that defines a market.
Unlike the days of mainframe and frame relay, there is nothing special about the technology of the pipe itself – there are lots of pipes, a road network rather than a railroad system, and you can try building them anywhere.
In many ways this is a decription of a natural ecosystem where there is no need for ‘intelligently designed’ infrastructure, but self emergent relationships based upon environmental niches.
Go read Kessler – its worth it.