12
NEWS & VIEWS
August 2017
It is about the content, and more
by shawn liew
HONG KONG – In the increas-
ingly connected world that we
live in, smartphones and 4G will
act as key catalysts for the growth
of over-the-top (OTT) services
in Asia-Pacific (excluding China).
From 2017 to 2022, an incremental
395 million mobile broadband sub-
scribers will be added, with more
than 145 coming from South-east
Asia, reported Aravind Venugopal,
vice-president, Media Partners Asia
(MPA).
Speaking as he welcomed dele
gates to the APOSTech 2017 sum-
mit held in Hong Kong last month,
Venugopal also presented MPA’s
prediction that the quality of fixed
broadband will “significantly im-
prove” to support OTT. During the
same period, more than 30 million
next-generation fixed broadband
subscriptions will be added, with
more than 45% of these coming
from India.
While welcoming these find-
ings, Hari Nagpal, managing direc-
tor and CEO of Tata Sky, pointed
out pragmatically that many in
India today still do not have access
to broadband. He asked: “We can
have as many as 100 million-150
million customers using mobile
pre-paid plans. How many days
can we get out of them? How do
we make our service so attractive
that we compel them to top up
their pre-paid plan? In essence,
how do we find a non-broadband
way to increase stickiness?”
During the show, there was
also a major announcement from
Fox, as the company is working
with Australian telco Optus to
Delegates at APOSTech 2017 listening to presenters discussing a variety of issues concerning OTT, including strategies,
business models and relationships between various partners in the ecosystem.
launch the National Geographic
app in Australia. Subsequent
roll-outs will continue across Asia-
Pacific and the Middle East, and
follow on the heels of the launch
of Fox+, an Internet streaming
service, in Singap ore and the
Phillippines.
These launches also represent
a continuation of Fox’s mobile-first
strategy, said Rohit D’Silva, EVP,
commercial, Asia-Pacific and Mid-
dle East, Fox Networks Group. “We
play to our strengths and we con-
stantly ask ourselves how we can
encourage engagement and get
people to come back to us. A clear
navigation utility and merging our
on-demand and linear offerings is
one way forward,” he added.
While many content producers
and owners such as Fox and HBO
are embarking on their own OTT
journeys, they stress the impor-
tance of continuing with their in-
cumbent partners. Jonathan Spink,
CEO of HBO Asia, said: “While HBO
Go (a streaming service which
HBO is offering in Asia-Pacific with
partners such as Singapore telco
StarHub) has opened up new op-
portunities for us, we will continue
to work with partners, including
telcos.
“For companies who want to go
directly to the consumers, pricing
is key, while there are also rights
issues that need to be sorted out.”
Another aspect of the OTT eco-
system that needs to be improved
upon is the business model. Until
that happens, accessing the life-
time value of a customer will remain
a non sequitur, suggested Peter
Bithos, CEO of HOOQ. “What you
see in the market today will evolve
greatly over the next few years. The
value of a customer then perhaps
lies in how long you are able to hold
on to them.”
Bithos was speaking together
with Michael Fleshman, the newly
appointed CTO of HOOQ, who was
formerly with the BBC. Position
content nearer to the customer,
advised Fleshman. “The current
OTT model doesn’t match lifestyles
— you must adapt models to the
way people live their lives. Not
everyone has connectivity every
day, and do you really understand
what your customers want? Under-
stand what they want, understand
their lifestyles, then cultivate the
ability to cycle through various
business models and execute them
effectively.”
HOOQ currently has more than
20,000 hours of content — the
biggest challenge, however, Bithos
added, is how do you bring all
this content to viewers, or more
specifically, how do you bring the
right content to the right audi-
ence? “We believe that it is key
to always give the customer the
sense of something new, all the
time,” he said.
Convergence, be it between
businesses, technologies or plat-
forms, will be a key word for the
industry, said Jeremy Kung, CEO
and EVP, New Media, Telekom
Malaysia. Within this structure,
content must not be viewed as an
add-on service; it must be a core
business, he cautioned.
Having said that, just how
much content is enough? How
extensive do content libraries need
to be in order to attract and retain
subscribers? Deepak Mathur, EVP,
global sales, SES Video, presented
a fact that perhaps offered some
food for thought: The top 60 titles
fetch about 80% of all video-on-
demand (VoD) viewing; the re-
maining 20% is accounted for by
45,000 titles.
And within a VoD, IP and mo-
bile world, satellite still has a key
role to play by acting as a content
distribution network (CDN) in the
sky to facilitate time-shifting, loca-
tion-shifting and device-shifting,
Mathur emphasised. “Satellite can
distribute content in territories
with limited connectivity to the
backbones, working as a CDN in
White Paper @ www.apb-news.com
Implementing support for
HDR using software-based
video solutions
v
Video continuously moves forward.
Black-and-white video ultimately gave
way to standard definition colour. In
turn, the limited standard-definition
(SD) palette gave way to high-definition
(HD) with its higher resolution and more
numerous and richer colours. Technology
continued to march