Friday, July 30, 2010

Tekelec CTO: "Mobile Operators is a Better Business than OTT Services" - Is it?

    
Vince Lesch, Tekelec's CTO (which carries the former Camiant Policy Management offering) explains in a short video (see below) why mobile carriers are and will be doing better than Over-the-Top content providers.

His main arguments are:
  • OTT players are totally dependent on mobile operators
     
  • The customers are willing to pay for the mobility value much more than they pay for content. Mobile operators are generating $40-50 a month from each customer while an OTT provider generates a quarter of a penny (if I heard right)
I believe that Vince should have also considered the following:
  • An OTT provider targets the national or global population, and is not limited to a single carrier's customer base
     
  • A mobile operator has to maintain a very expensive infrastructure (see - "AT&T will invest $19B this Year to Upgrade the Network" - here) to provide the mobility - significantly less than the cost of providing content to a much bigger audience.

    As a result, mobile operators are facing the challenge of increased costs vs. decreasing revenues ("scissor effect") - only Value Added Services may improve this.

    Can the operators provide enough valuable content without cooperating with OTT players?
And as far as Tekelec is concerned - wont they see more business if they encourage the OTT-Mobile operators cooperation? (see "Net Neutrality - AT&T Endorses Amazon's Win-Win-Win Proposal" - here)

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