“Imagine the BT experience in the U.S. or in Asia,” Daryl Dunbar, director of British Telecom's 21st Century Network initiative, told attendees of a panel discussion at the NXTcomm trade show last month. “You can envision a world where the consumer has a consistent experience regardless of what network they're on.”

Imagining BT offering services over U.S. telco networks was likely not a calming thought for any U.S. telco employees in the crowd, but it's not a new anxiety. From Vonage to YouTube to Joost to whatever's next, carriers have long been threatened by third-party Web-based services flowing through their networks. When asked about it in panel discussions or on therapists' couches, telco executives have at times insisted that the carriers running the networks are in a much better position than anyone else to guarantee the performance and quality of services delivered to the home, making them the ones consumers trust most to deliver broadband-based services.

That's exactly the kind of response that ignites fear and anxiety among the same set of third-party Web-based service providers that are causing fear and anxiety among telcos. Content folks are afraid of non-neutral networks; telcos are afraid of becoming dumb pipes. And somehow, they all have to get along. BT is one of the first incumbent telcos to give voice to a vision of a dumb-pipe world and to do so unafraid.

“All of us carriers are threatened by the open nature of the Internet,” Dunbar said. “This is the way that we as service providers can communicate and maintain that which is rightfully ours: a direct one-to-one relationship with our customers. It's not about carving up the pie and me getting a bigger slice. It's about making the pie bigger so we can all get a share.”