Comfort and Content is King

By Tatu Tahkokallio, Group Marketing Director

A day doesn’t go by in the telco industry without hearing ‘Content is King’. It’s at the forefront of the operator’s mind and continues to shape their business. But as consumers become more and more demanding, so do their expectations. During 4Q11, mobileSQUARED surveyed 52 of the world’s leading operators to find out exactly what they thought and to understand how the industry can compete in a digital world. The results showed that the ‘Content King’ is about to get its Queen!

Though voice and text still provide the majority of revenue it can no longer be relied upon to maintain consumer interest. Operators must retain existing and attract new subscribers by extending their offering of telecom services with a range of digital goods, applications and content. According to the recent mobileSQUARED research, mobile payment services, video on demand (VOD) and cloud storage are the three most valuable content services that operators will offer customers over the next 3-5 years.

Operators need flexibility to serve different customer segments by creating a host of alternative services packages. 31 per cent of all operators said that they currently offer quad-play services (fixed telephony, mobile telephony, broadband and cable/internet TV). What’s interesting is that one third of all operators which do not currently offer quad-play said that they either want, or intend, to start offering these services in the next 3-5 years meaning that almost two thirds of operators will be offering quad-play communication bundles by 2017. The bundle is about to get bigger.

Operators also realise that they need to extend their offering to third-party products and services if they want to keep growing. According to operators, 85 per cent of operators now view a product catalogue as a commercial necessity, with the majority of operators believing that offering their own app store would bring no value. A unified product catalogue can provide a comprehensive solution for managing all products and services, and can help operators respond quickly to changing customer needs by supporting rapid creation and deployment of new service offerings and bundles.

Almost half of all operators surveyed appreciate that the consumer wants all the content in one place, but their inflexible legacy systems hampered their ability to charge for different products and different services in one place.

Whatever way content is delivered, how consumers access and store the content will be where operators can differentiate and compete on delivering a comfortable, easy to use, one stop shop. Whilst content such as Skype, iMessage, Google Talk, Facebook Messages, WhatsApp and VOD could threaten to take the consumer further away from the operator, they must instead use it to stand out from the crowd. Content is still King, but content isn’t on its own anymore, it’s time to be joined by comfort and simplicity. Now it is certainly the case that ‘Content and Comfort is King’.

Please click here to view the full report.