Lebanon's Regulator Presents Business Models for OTT Monetization

 
[The Broadband Traffic Management Blog 2012 Survey explores the issues discussed in this post. Click here to tell us what you think!]
 

Jamie Beach interviewed Dr. Imad Hoballah (pictured), Acting Chairman and CEO of Lebanon’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, to telecoms.com

One of the issues was the challenge of carrier/OTT content provider relations:

"How big a challenge does over-the-top video pose to broadband operators and networks?"

The answer was " Broadband service providers and operators are at risk of becoming dumb–pipe providers .. Even though revenues from OTT are small in comparison to those from new IPTV service offerings, they still represent a missed opportunity for service providers .. Some suggest that the best approach for operators is to negotiate partnerships with OTT providers. One way to do that would be to charge for content delivery and guarantee quality of service for certain types of OTT traffic. This could be paid for by either the content provider or by the end-user. However, it remains questionable whether giant OTT providers are willing to enter into such agreements with much smaller service providers"

When asked "How can network operator’s best monetize their investments in super-fast broadband networks?" Mr.  Hoballah said that ".. The first option is to avoid competition with those [OTT] providers by delivering an extra layer of value that only they can provide. This layer is based on using data analysis, such as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), which leads to “customer experience visibility”, resulting in huge opportunities in the advertising world such as targeted ads .. The second option is to leverage the network policy capabilities the network operators have, to deliver an enhanced video streaming service for partners that want to guarantee a certain QoS for their customers. A revenue sharing model might be used in this case.

See "Broadband operators are at risk of becoming dumb–pipe providers" - here.