The cloud and the Internet form the backbone of global commerce and have enabled countless new businesses and innovations. The network behind it, though, has grown in an unplanned way, and consequent weaknesses in the architecture of the web must be addressed. The telecoms industry has therefore decided to disrupt itself to secure the future. In this article the authors examine why the industry has chosen this path and how by re-imagining their networks as part of the cloud they could create significant new value, both for companies engaged in web commerce and for themselves.