Growing the Pay-TV Industry: It's Time for Disruptive Thinking!

Next Generation Communications Blog

Growing the Pay-TV Industry: It's Time for Disruptive Thinking!

By: Wim Van Daele, PMP
Director, Communications – Motive CxS Portfolio, mCommerce & IP Video Solutions

For far too long, the pay-TV industry has been hanging on to legacy infrastructures and traditional business models. Few people are raising the one question that really matters: will today’s practices allow us to face the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow?

Guess what? They won’t. To secure growth in this established market, a more disruptive and unbiased thinking is required. Alcatel-Lucent embraces this new, open mindset - while marrying it to a staged and economically viable migration scenario.

As a starting point, three key thoughts/questions for your consideration:

What is the hardest thing to get right when building a new IP video service? 

Is it all about “scaling” – as most vendors claim? Well, scaling is indeed an important element: in the near future, every connected device is to get a personalized, unicast video feed. The big question, however, is whether networks can scale sufficiently by hanging on to traditional broadcasting practices. That is why Alcatel-Lucent suggests a staged migration to a more scalable architecture – with minimal business disruption and reduced investment waste. No more hanging on to legacy infrastructures, while acknowledging that financial prudence dictates they can’t simply be turned off either.

Or, at least, not yet…

What are some of the most exciting, recent trends in the IP video space?

There’s more to it than just delivering a common end-user video experience across multiple screens. We think the most significant trend is the rapid adoption of smart devices with a lot of processing power. Again, the big question is how to leverage their capabilities and intelligence to build more scalable and economical pay-TV networks.  Can they incorporate some of the capabilities that currently sit somewhere else in the network, for instance?

What are the major challenges thrown up by second-screen experiences?

There is no more such thing as a technology challenge; it is really about business enablers and economics. It is about content protection and delivering/managing a consistent, high-quality experience – through on-net CDNs, for instance. 

At the end of the day it is about changing the conversation with the end user to assure a stronger, more compelling and durable relationship. Alcatel-Lucent can do this: we architect the network for high-quality video and have the expertise to build and integrate it. Moreover, service providers need to have the tools in place, like the Alcatel-Lucent portfolio of Alcatel-Lucent Motive Customer Experience Solutions, to manage, analyze and optimize the customer experience in a flexible, extensible and responsive manner. It is time for some disruptive thinking!

 

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