Being just a dumb data pipe means you aren't differentiated from other dumb data pipes, making it harder to compete with other carriers on anything other than p

Being just a dumb data pipe means you aren't differentiated from other dumb data pipes, making it harder to compete with other carriers on anything other than price (reducing revenue) and service reliability/speed (and we all know how awful ISPs are at building out better infrastructure). This does make it much harder to be profitable.