Operators can win customers by offering more targeted content, leveraging their billing assets to encourage consumers to make small purchases.
Customers are willing to pay more – to a certain extent - for the right multi-screen TV service and that could mean an additional revenue stream for telecoms operators, provided they get their propositions right.
As networks evolve, telcos are able to provide multi-screen offerings and mobile apps in addition to their standard home broadband and TV offers. And while consumers, particularly the younger generations, expect this sort of capability as standard, there is still some incremental revenue to capture.
"[There is] definitely revenue uplift," said Guillaume Sampic, head of strategy at U.K. mobile operator and provider of a nascent TV service EE, speaking at an event hosted by Total Telecom and TV technology provider Netgem in Barcelona on Tuesday.
"We heavily cross-sell [EE TV] to our home broadband" and mobile customer bases, he said.
EE TV also has a "positive impact on 4G data usage," he added, which is more of "an indirect monetisation."
Bob Lamboray, head of IPTV operations at Luxembourg incumbent Post, takes a similar view. His company has a more established IPTV service, boasting 50,000 customers in a market of just 200,000 households, and plans to augment its offer with a new mobile TV service in April.
"We also plan to launch an online TV service," which will not require a set-top box and will therefore make for an easier upsell, he said.
Both operators use an IPTV platform provided by Netgem.
"[Telcos] have a role to play," in this market, Sylvain Thevenot, managing director at TV technology provider Netgem, told Total Telecom on the sidelines of the event. "But they have to get their act together."
Telcos' billing assets give them a big opportunity in the market, Thevenot said, by facilitating low-value transactions on the part of their customers.
A customer is more likely to pay for a movie rental or sign up for a Netflix package, for example, if they can add the cost to their regular bill, and as a result content providers are more likely to give a small revenue cut to the telcos.
"If you add it up it starts to be meaningful," Thevenot said. "It's totally incremental."
Analysts also believe there is money to be made.
"We're all very happy to pay a slight premium," on top of a standard home broadband and TV package for a TV bundle that comes with the right content, said Chris Lewis, founder of Lewis Insight.
Customers will pay for their fixed and mobile connectivity, but operators can generate "thin-ish layers of revenue [on top]… as long as it's not extortionate," he said.
This is especially true for telcos competing with high-end cable packages, where customers are paying a premium for a plethora of channels, many of which they don't actually want. Telecoms operators can be more relevant by offering more targeted content.
EE has taken up this very position.
EE TV focuses on the middle ground, "between pay TV loyalists…and freeview-only [customers]," Sampic said.
Source: http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=492879&G=1&C=2&page=2