Operators have seen themselves as being in the voice and texting business, and now they’re thinking more about this thing called mobile broadband and being in the broadband business. They never stopped to think about what problems mobile users were trying to solve or what habits were forming around this new technology.

So, for example, the address book is a key part of the mobile experience, but there has been almost zero innovation in the address book. The most innovative thing I’ve seen here is with Jitterbug who had the common sense to realise that certain types of users couldn’t program their address books, so they offer to do it for you over the network. They also allow relatives and friends to do it for you - how smart is that?

But why don’t we have this anyway? Why can’t I request to be added to your phonebook and you simply accept or deny, as you like – and I can do this, if need be, via email or some other way without having to know your phone number, if you want to keep it private (until you let me in). This would be a great social networking tool. How about if I could read your address book, or we can share address books? (p.s. whatever happened to FOAF files?) Why can’t your address book always have my latest number when and if I change numbers?

Sure, we’re starting to see this kind of thing now, but only in niche apps that mostly run on a select few ’smart’ phones. The address book is a unique attribute of being mobile – you always carry it with you. It should have become a major part of the platform within the greater scheme of being in the social-networking business that operators are really in, if they were smart enough to realise it.

I hear via Ajit’s blog that the ‘let’s not become dumb pipes‘ warning is doing the rounds yet again at MWC. For heaven’s sake, it’s like holding a hose pipe and offering water, but not having the good sense to know that I could water your garden, wash your car, rinse your driveway and so on. If you’re dumb enough not to realise the value-add of your pipe, then don’t get all upset about being a dumb pipe provider. Is that dumb-pipe provider or dumb pipe-provider? I’ll let you place the hyphen as you like.

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