Service providers will need to move beyond triple-play, says report

Service providers will increasingly have to offer subscribers more complex bundled products in place of traditional triple- or quad-play offerings, according to a study by Informa Telecoms & Media.

According to Informa senior analyst Tony Brown, operators will increasingly have to include OTT content from companies like Netflix and Spotify, and possibly VoIP offerings from the likes of Skype, to keep subscribers satisfied.

Netflix and other OTT video providers will contribute to a dramatic increase in consumer Internet traffic over the next few years, according to Informa’s Beyond Quad-Play: How Multi-Screen, OTT and the Cloud Are Transforming Next-Generation Bundling.

Informa predicts that traffic generated by online video services will see a six fold rise in the five years to 2017, reaching 732,308 petabytes per annum. By 2017, online video services such as high definition video, pay online video and video to TV will account for 46% of total Internet traffic, up from 36% in 2012, says the report. Meanwhile, in the five years to 2017, traffic generated by online communications services such as VoIP, video communications instant messaging will grow at an average annual rate of 29% to reach 23,657 PB pa; OTT services will account for a significant share of this total.

“We have already seen from the early deployment of multiscreen TV services by operators that many subscribers are highly resistant to paying extra for new services – so many of these new services really have to be included as part of the existing bundled price,” said Brown. “Operators need to see the addition of these new services, such as cloud storage or OTT content, as something that brings extra value and increases customer loyalty – and go at least some way to neutering the threat posed by OTT players in a number of fields.”