OTT and telcos: strategic allies in the new era of streaming

En esta tribuna, Juan Navarro, Vice President & Head en Latinoamérica de GlobalLogic, reflects on the new strategies of telcos and the IPTV world to confront OTT platforms, which involves the generation of alliances and assuming the role of “super-aggregators”.

Today the streaming It has become one of the main drivers of the digital ecosystem. OTT platforms are those that generate and distribute the content that millions of people consume around the world, but They critically depend on the network infrastructure to reach each user with quality and speed. And this is where telcos have found an opportunity to reposition themselves. It is no longer just about providing connectivity, but about taking a leap towards a much more strategic role.

The future points to telcos becoming true super-aggregators, that is, centralizing in the same ecosystem the possibility of acquiring entertainment services, making payments, accessing financial solutions, contracting content and enjoying personalized experiences. This means that they stop being seen only as the highway through which information circulates and become TechCos, enabling new business flows on their infrastructure..

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From competition to alliance

Initially, when OTTs emerged, many telcos saw them as a threat. It seemed that the user was going to pay directly for the content and that the operator was reduced to a secondary role, with increasingly tight margins. But the market changed: The proliferation of platforms and the saturation of subscriptions made it evident that the user needed to simplify their experience.

The future indicates that telcos become true super aggregators, that is, they centralize in the same ecosystem the possibility of acquiring services entertainment, carry out paid, access financial solutions, hire contents and enjoy personalized experiences.

That was the turning point. GlobalLogic analyzes this panorama in a report about the industry. Telcos began to integrate OTT services into their own offering, offering connectivity plus access to streaming platforms in the same package. streaming, with a single invoice and the possibility of paying even from the phone's balance or through digital wallets. In this way they went from being indirect competitors to strategic partners of the OTTs.. Today we see operators that, thanks to these alliances, become true super-aggregators, capable of distributing content, managing the relationship with the client and offering them a much more complete experience.

At GlobalLogic we have worked with telcos in the region to design portals that integrate different OTTs within the same digital channel. This not only improves navigation and direct recruiting, but opens up new revenue streams through subscriptions, advertising, and sponsorships.

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A win-win between telcos and OTT

The alliance between telcos and OTT is undoubtedly beneficial for both sides. On the one hand, For telcos it means building customer loyalty, because a user who concentrates connectivity, entertainment and financial services in the same operator is unlikely to change company. They also opens the door to new sources of income, whether through the cross-selling of services, the monetization of APIs or the development of integrated financial solutions such as gateways payment or mobile wallets.

Collaboration with telcos makes it possible to take advantage of new technical capabilities, such as those enabled Open Gateway to guarantee transmission quality, prioritize traffic or detect fraud in real time.

For OTTs, however, The alliance represents the possibility of expanding your reach. Through telcos they reach massive audiences, even in markets where access to credit cards is limited, because the operator acts as a payment channel and reduces subscription friction. Furthermore, collaboration with telcos makes it possible to take advantage of new technical capabilities, such as those enabled by Open Gateway to guarantee transmission quality, prioritize traffic or detect fraud in real time.

In the region, for example, we have worked on the design of digital wallets that today are independent business units within telcos, with millions of active users and growing monthly transactions. We also develop intelligent automation solutions with artificial intelligence, such as conversational agents that are integrated into WhatsApp or web portals and that managed to reduce calls to call centers by 40% in just a few months. All of this reinforces customer loyalty and improves their experience while optimizing costs for the telco.

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The future of this collaboration

What is coming is an even deeper integration. We will see how telcos offer flexible and personalized bundles, which will allow the user to create their own mix of OTTs according to their interests and budget.. We will also see financial services become increasingly integrated into the experience, with digital wallets, loans, insurance and even fraud detection as part of the telco offering. At GlobalLogic we have been accompanying this process in Latin America, helping to modernize regional billing systems, deploy integrated content portals, implement API programs with global standards and develop mobile financial platforms that are transformed into new business units.

The artificial intelligence will play a key role in the offer customization, from recommend content until anticipate billing errors and solve them before they reach the customer.

The adoption of Open Gateway and standardized APIs will open the door for OTTs to consume network capabilities programmatically, which will ensure quality of service in streaming, enable immersive experiences with 5G or improve transaction security. Artificial intelligence will play a key role in personalizing the offer, from recommending content to anticipating billing errors and resolving them before they reach the customer.

All this makes us reach the same conclusion. And we, as suppliers, must follow the same objective that the industry follows: helping the telcos become TechCos, with a service portfolio a lot more broad, con greater capacity to generate income and, above all, with more loyal customers.

Juan Navarro

Vice President & Head en Latinoamérica de GlobalLogic