Content partnerships: time to sleep with the enemy
Presuming that cellcos have worked out the timelines for migrating to HSPA+ and/or LTE, their other big priority should be figuring out just where they sit in the mobile content value chain - or rather, where they want to sit - and how to achieve that.
Easier said than done, obviously, as there are a myriad of options, and the mobile content landscape is a fragmented one. But cellcos don't have much choice. Thanks chiefly to Apple and Google, the mobile broadband goalposts have shifted from a future where dongles and HSPA-embedded laptops will drive mobile data usage back to a paradigm where handsets do matter, as does the content ecosystem attached to it. That in turn is changing the expectations of consumers in terms of what content they want and how they get it.
Consequently, many cellcos are starting to admit that they can no longer do it all and are starting to look seriously at partnerships with over-the-top content and service providers like Skype, Google and others.
Such companies have long been viewed by cellcos as competitors and/or bandwidth freeloaders, but the awful truth is that they provide content and services that mobile users want.
That said, part of the key to mobile content strategies lies in the fact that operators are sitting on assets that OTT content players - VoIP players, streaming music/video providers, cloud-based service providers, etc - can leverage to distribute their services, from location-based data and billing APIs to network optimization platforms, especially for real-time apps like video and online games. That B2B approach opens up a potentially lucrative revenue stream that could pay off even more in cases where cellcos can work out a revenue-sharing arrangement for premium OTT services.
Those same assets can also be leveraged by cellcos to build their own value-added services in areas ranging from mobile payments to customized services for vertical industries such as financial, healthcare and public safety.
- John C. Tanner
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