If wireless carriers allow competing Internet telephony services over their networks, they risk suffering the same fate as newspapers today. The nightmare scenario of Trojan horse and dumb pipes is within grasp of reality.

Common sense dictates that a business will not let a competitor brand or service access its distribution channel to reach end-customers offering the same type of service. Yet that is what carriers such as Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint and now AT&T are doing to themselves.

While a resurgent Federal Communications Commission is busy speaking up for consumers, one of the unintentional consequences of its newfound activism is ?convincing? carriers to allow services that offer long-distance Internet telephony to run on the same wireless networks.

In other words, Google Voice may soon be able to run on AT&T?s network, as it is on other networks. Google Voice offers the same services as AT&T does: the ability to place and receive calls, albeit using the Web. Now that doesn?t make any business sense for a network to willingly allow a Trojan horse in its ranks.

Let?s turn the tables. How would Google ? accounting for almost three out of four searches online ? react if the FCC asked the search giant to run Microsoft?s Bing or Yahoo?s search box on its homepage? One word: outrage. Another word: lawsuit.

And yet carriers are being forced into this awkward position of offering Internet telephony services through Web and applications accessed over their networks. The chickens will come home to roost, as newspapers have already discovered to their dismay.

Nooseprint
As is well-chronicled, newspapers in the past decade offered all their content for free on the Internet, while continuing to charge for print editions. The justification in the 1990s and even up until three years ago was building a sizable online audience against which to sell advertising.  

Well, what the newspapers discovered was the audience numbers did swell online. However, that growth was a shift in eyeballs, and not incremental as was hoped.

Any reader with common sense soon figured out why pay for a news product that was free in one medium ? the Internet ? and updated regularly, versus paying for a static print product. Add to that the simple fact that most news today is a commodity, making it harder to charge for content online.

The end result is for all to see.

A similar exercise to charge for mobile news may face the same fate ? unless all media outlets unite and draw the bridge on free Web news. But that would invite charges of anticompetitive practices and ugly lawsuits.

Media brands are groping for a strategy to survive. Older organizations have built their revenue models around mostly print advertising and some circulation revenue ? never a major draw other than an indicator of guaranteed circulation rate base.

That old model is collapsing quicker than a deck of cards.

Advertisers are fleeing print, but not migrating that entire spend online. Internet advertising alone cannot support a newsroom, ad sales force and backend operations. Plus, most news is a commodity, available through hundreds, if not thousands, of avenues.

News Corp. chairman/CEO Rupert Murdoch?s idea of gating news online has little chance of working. Subscription revenues never did support a news brand in print and nor will they sustain an online outlet either.

On the contrary, fewer eyeballs online will mean fewer impressions and fewer click-throughs on articles and advertisements. Consequently, advertising performance will worsen and advertisers will soon shift spends to other media.

Hyper over Skypers
Carriers must learn from newspapers. They cannot let themselves become dumb pipes. To allow companies such as Google or Skype to offer Internet telephony over their networks is business suicide, threatening their bread-and-butter source of revenue.

Indeed, why would consumers opt for elaborate calling and data plans with a carrier if all they need is a VoIP application to make and receive calls? Why would they need a carrier to make long-distance calls if Skype will allow them to do the same for free to fellow Skypers or for a few pennies to non-Skype users?

Perhaps this is an early alarm, but it needs to be sounded.

Per research conducted by Mobile Marketer?s Giselle Tsirulnik, Dan Butcher and Chris Harnick, voice still makes up the bulk of revenues for most carriers.

For example, voice accounted for 48 percent of Sprint?s overall revenue last year, while data comprised 15.1 percent of the pie.

For the 2008-09 year, voice accounted for 72.8 percent of AT&T Mobility?s overall revenue. Voice comprised an estimated 78 percent of Verizon Wireless? revenues and 80 percent of T-Mobile USA?s gross sales.

Expect the proportions of voice revenue to decrease as the growing number of smartphones increases the demand for data services. Some analysts predict that smartphones will outsell feature phones by 2012.

With that smartphone tsunami will come changed consumer behavior.

Long-term observers of the Internet may remember fin-de-siecle services such as Dialpad and its ilk, offering almost free computer-to-computer telephone calls over the wired Web. Then came Skype and Yahoo with more consumer-friendly and reliable offerings. 

The popularity of Internet telephony caused a drop in the price of phone calls. And while all these developments have been advantageous to consumers, they ultimately are detrimental to corporate bottom lines.

Call it right
There?s no point in turning back the clock or advocating for a monopolistic hold on Internet telephony through carrier networks. The FCC simply won?t allow it. Nor will outraged consumers.

But just imagine the day when carriers discover that a large chunk of their voice customers are turning to other mobile-Web-based Internet telephony services or applications such as Skype or Google Voice. Are they prepared to replace that revenue? And if they can?t find an alternative revenue stream, how will these networks spend the billions required to maintain their 4G networks?

Indeed, how will they sustain the cost of those cell towers? How will they pay for those union-protected salaries? How will they pay for those full-page newspaper ads? Yes, newspapers again will face a battering.

In fact, the very notion of a wireless carrier will be called into question.

Take the iPod touch. Why would Apple need a carrier partner if it ? as might happen someday ? decides to offer wireless access and not local Wi-Fi for its iPod touch? Tack the Google Voice or Skype application on and the consumer has a mobile phone without the cumbersome city, state and federal taxes and countless small-print surcharges.

Envisage a future where every electronic device offers wireless access, including the ability to call, email and message. It?s already happening with Amazon?s Kindle and rival bookseller Barnes & Noble?s soon-to-launch e-reader for buying books.

So what role will carriers play in the future if their main source of revenue ? voice ? is jeopardized? How will they differentiate themselves from their competitors then if they haven?t been able to do so now with the exception of cool phone models, fewer dropped calls and uninspiring advertising?

Carrying water for carriers is no fun. Not especially when they behave monopolistically and have been slow to embrace the growth of mobile content, marketing and commerce ? perhaps the very streams of revenue that will fortify them for a future of wireless fragmentation or mobile mayhem.

However, carriers play a key role in the development of mobile marketing. Their networks are the backbone of the mobile marketing, media and commerce ecosystem ? for the moment. To jeopardize their future is to jeopardize mobile marketing and mobile commerce.

Carriers must double up to offer competitive options to applications such as Google Voice and Skype and prepare to defend their lucrative voice plans before consumers and the FCC, while remembering Virgil?s lines, ?Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes? ? Do not trust Greeks bearing gifts.