Empowering smaller telcos to compete with TV giants

Building a robust TV platform requires significant investment in technology, continuous content management, and the agility to adapt to rapidly changing consumer preferences. For many, the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t add up, resulting in companies too often launching subpar TV services or none at all.

The stakes are high. Studies show that households with bundled TV and internet services have significantly higher retention rates than those with standalone services. A recent Deloitte report showed that 40% of consumers are more likely to stay with their current provider if satisfied with their TV service. For smaller telcos and ISPs, failing to meet these expectations can result in losing competitive edge, revenue, and even customers in a saturated market.

The pay-TV market is fragmented, especially with smaller local players serving specific regions. Europe alone hosts over 200 pay-TV providers, most with fewer than 500,000 subscribers. This modest scale (especially compared to vast markets in APAC and North America) poses competitive disadvantages. However, it is a challenge that they need to face.

The key comes in the as-a-service model. Leveraging managed services has been common practice, allowing providers to focus on core activities while outsourcing technical operations. Traditionally, this model has limitations in scalability and often involves extensive on-premise integration, requiring significant in-house resources.

This is where the TV-as-a-service concept comes in. By moving to a TVaaS model, telcos and ISPs can enter the TV market without the usual attendant headaches. Outsourcing can smooth over TV complexities by offering hard bundles that encompass essentials alongside soft bundles that are modular and adaptable to the distinct needs of each operator. In the best solutions this even offers options for using their own imagery and custom-branded interfaces, ensuring a seamless and personalised user experience.

The ideal cloud-based platform covers all bases: content processing, subtitling, content management, video delivery, device assistance, and front-end apps. Conversely it also needs to be fully modular, allowing operators to tailor their service by selecting only the necessary components they require for their workflow.

Such a service also ties in to the current meta trend for bundling and super aggregation. This brings together content from various streaming services, traditional TV channels, and on-demand platforms into a single interface, allowing customers to access all their favourite shows, movies, and live TV through one platform. Ideally it goes several steps beyond this too; offering such customer benefits as single sign on, single payment, and also a unified search that reaches across all services.

By bundling TV services with broadband and mobile plans, telcos can attract more customers, increase average revenue per user (ARPU), and reduce churn. Perhaps more critically, they not only outsource the services, they also reduce the complexities and externalise the risks of establishing TV services to a great extent.

In short, TVaaS allows smaller telcos to focus on their core strengths while ensuring their TV offerings are competitive, scalable, and profitable. It means that the future of TV is more accessible and manageable than ever before.