mental efficiency. Our thesis throughout is that if a process or product is technically inefficient it is less likely to be commercially efficient, although I have had some wry comments about Microsoft having broken this rule and yes this is the second time this morning that my com- puter has crashed. In network terms this means that bandwidth functionality and the value realisable from that functionality must always exceed network cost amortised over the life of the network. We have drawn on our own past work in terms of prior published books and articles and research undertaken over the past twenty five years and the advice and guidance and suggestions of many friends and colleagues in the industry. In this last chapter we take a final look at our research over the last five years and dangerously and presumptuously use this to make some predictions for the next five and 50 years forward. In February 2006 we wrote a piece about competitive networks. We suggested that future networks would need to develop new mechanisms for capturing user bandwidth and user value and that the most successful networks would be those that most successfully competed for billable revenue - aggressively competitive networks. Competitive networks were defined as intelligent networks with ambition. They could also be described as 'smart networks' using 'smart' in the contemporary sense of a network having Making Telecoms Work: From Technical Innovation to Commercial Success, First Edition. Geoff Varrall. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Making Telecoms Work a developed ability to make money. Competitive networks may have other obligations, which may include social and political gain. Smart competitive networks are efficient at translating social and political gain into economic advantage. Economic gain is the product of a composite of cost and functional efficiency and added value. Added value is delivered through service provision and billing, but is dependent on a broad mix of enabling technolog