TeleManagement Forum Chairman Keith Willets began the visual portion of his keynote address last week at his forum's event in Dallas with a quote by the most infamous man in America: Borat, a caricature who has become an even bigger household name than Sacha Cohen's other alter ego, Ali G, thanks to his ability to expose people for who or what they really are. Perhaps the industry should hire him so service providers can figure out at last what they are.

The identity crisis from which many service providers are suffering these days is not their fault. They were quite happy being what they were for the last century. It was outsiders that forced them to be something they were not and suddenly uppity customers who got it in their heads somehow that they could start demanding things like new services and lower prices that created such a crisis. Service providers are in doubt now, stuck between being one thing or another: a content and services provider to end users or a network and applications provider to other content providers.

The truth is both are good businesses. But smaller, more nagging questions are harder to answer. The primary question is who owns the customer? But there are others. Who provides the real value? Who derives the value? Who will pay for that value? Who will ensure and measure the value? Who will enhance the value, or in other words, provide the “value add?”

Too many people believe the network doesn't have value, that it is just a long, winding set of dumb pipes. I say, let them think it. Let them think it right up to the day they put their prized content on it and something goes wrong. Then the network service provider will be seen for what it is, and it will be called value.

Put Borat in front of the YouTube guys or other market cap-driven, low-revenue content providers for an hour, and we'll see them for what they really are: very bright, very lucky mousetrap salesmen with no distribution networks of their own, no delivery chain, no service assurance capabilities, no customer service apparatus. Borat would have them singing one of his renditions of the “Star Spangled Banner” in no time. He would have them bowing to the Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Telecom.

Perhaps service provider should not worry so much about what they are or are going to be and just let others players that want a piece of this industry figure it out for themselves — the hard way.

TECH INDUSTRY'S HOLIDAY WISH LIST

Although two gaming consoles topped CompTIA's Web poll about what IT professionals want for presents this year, several telcom gadgets round out the top 11, with smartphones coming in at No. 5.

1 Sony PlayStation 3, 21.2
2 HDTV, 18.1
3 Xbox 360, 10.2
4 Digital Camera, 9.0
6 Smartphone, 5.8
5 MP3 Player, 5.7
7 Wireless Home Network, 4.6
8 Digital Video Recorder, 4.4
9 Tablet PC, 4.1
10 HD-DVD Player, 2.4
11 Portable Media Center, 1.5