Telco’s and IPTV
A very interesting article about the convergence of IPTV and Telco’s, written by Johna Till Johnson who is president and senior founding partner at Nemertes Research. You can read it here but if you don’t have the time I have included a short summary below of the most important points she makes.
In a previous post I commented on an article from the FT regarding the same subject.
Our carriers have had to deal with a lot lately such as the Internet and VoIP services. Their profits from offering directory services such as the Yellow Pages have been eating away by the likes of Google or Yahoo!
According to Johna Till Johnson IPTV lets carriers reverse that trend by giving them a shot at selling something for which the market demand is demonstrably insatiable: content.
Exploring the benifits of IPTV versus other forms of DTV
” So what exactly is the benefit of IPTV? For one thing, it gives telcos a sustainable consumer offering whose margins aren’t eroding. And by doing so, it introduces competition into the content-distribution business”
Ah..of course competition so things will be getting cheaper for the consumer??
“What IPTV gives carriers is the flexibility to experiment with content offerings until they hit on the packaging formula that consumers will pay money for.”
In other words, I think what she means is no, we are going to be willing to pay for more personalized content.
So the trend towards having free content isn’t going to change anything?
“People don’t pay for content itself; they pay for content to be packaged and delivered to them in a form factor that’s convenient. Take music: If free services destroyed the market for paid services, satellite radio wouldn’t be flourishing.”
