I think the bigger trend here is "internet protocols will win." We see it happening in telephony, television, music, and lots of other places.<p>Brilliant engineering has gone into the IP stack, with modular support for every aspect of getting information from point A to point B. Packetizing information, routing around network problems, dealing with congestion, choosing whether to prioritize getting every packet correctly vs getting packets in real time, discovering other network nodes, authenticating and authorizing, etc. The internet has all these problems solved pretty nicely, and the stack is flexible enough to do everything from voice calls to email to video streaming.<p>Yes, we still need infrastructure. Companies who provide cables and towers and satellites and fiber optic links are absolutely necessary. But flowing over those links, everything is moving towards IP.<p>It's silly that we still ship CDs and DVDs of audio and video data in boxes. It's silly to have a thousand TV channels streaming one-way to your house with no ability for the viewer to choose what they watch and when. It's silly, as this article points out, not to always choose the best pipe for my purpose.<p>The big trend is that infrastructure and services are being decoupled. "Dumb pipes" is an insulting way to say this: running a data network is still hard. But yes, the pipes should be neutral. We should pay for the best connection and, separately, use the best services we can reach over those connections.<p>As we keep finding ways to use the pipes for our purposes, we will keep converting all communication to the IP stack. Because it's better. It just is.<p>Dumb pipes + smart protocols will win. It's just a matter of time.