Only One Rival Can Topple Tech (and You’re Not Going to Like It)

The Google/Facebook duopoly* seems impenetrable — but telecom can disrupt the disruptors.

Verizon and the rest of big telecom could rival the Google/Facebook duopoly by creating open standards for data aimed at interoperability. This would be a power-move by service providers: leverage control of a chokepoint that’s upstream from the software giants in big data’s supply chain. Counterintuitively, that would actually enhance consumer protections, satisfying regulators by introducing competition in an otherwise monopoly market.

Big telecom would have to start by creating industry-wide “open standards,” a compulsory requirement for all players to make their common data interoperable (and anonymized 🙏). It sounds scary, like a cartel composed of the last people you’d ever want colluding, but it’s a mere agreement on data standardization with a crucial kicker: users must be given the choice to both opt-out and take their data with them to another carrier — an important check & balance for the industry.

There are many benefits from such a groundswell. From the consumer perspective alone, it would reduce the friction of changing services, which would incentivize telecoms to improve their user experiences. Effective monopolies over fiber infrastructure are part of what enables telecoms’ poor UX and atrocious customer service. If data becomes their new goldrush, they would not be hoarding a scarce physical resource anymore; rather, they would start competing to aggregate something abundant — and that competition has historically been won by servicing the demand-side with a superior experience.